A new milestone for global trade

Dec 7, 2013 is a date destined to go down in history, as the Bali Package marked a concrete step forward in the Doha Round of World Trade Organization trade talks. The last-minute deal came after tense overnight talks that extended the end of the WTO's 9th Ministerial Conference from Friday afternoon to Saturday morning.

After more than a decade of negotiations and missed deadlines, the WTO has finally achieved a breakthrough in its marathon trade-liberalization negotiations. Now there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel, people may regain their confidence in the WTO multilateral trade system.

Disputes between the developed and developing economies are the reason the WTO multilateral trade framework has failed to deliver on its promise up to now. To be more specific, the advanced economies have usually chosen to ignore the reasonable appeals of the emerging economies. In particular, the developed countries have refused to make concessions to the demands of the least developed countries. For instance, the issue of agricultural export subsidies in developed countries and the national food security issue for developing economies were both tough topics negotiated at the conference.