Policy Analysis

Small Victories in the Road Forward: "No breakthrough, but no breakdown" at WTO meetings in Hong Kong

By David Runnalls on January 10, 2006
Canada's Ministers of Trade and Agriculture joined their counterparts from 149 countries in Hong Kong last month for five gruelling days of high-stakes negotiations, designed to get the current round of world trade talks back on course. Meeting against a backdrop of sometimes violent public protest, and in talks that dragged into the wee hours of Sunday morning, the Ministers in the end managed, in the words of the Chair of the talks, "to pull a rabbit out of a hat." In the end, this may prove to be a very small rabbit.