The Doha Development Agenda (DDA), an ambitious new round of World Trade Organization (WTO) multilateral trade negotiations, was launched in November 2001, due in large part to the strong leadership of the United States. With 147 participants, the DDA is the largest negotiation of its kind in history, covering “everything from cars and corn to communications serv-ices and customs rules,” according to U.S. Trade Representative.

A successful finale to the DDA will bring new opportuni-ties for American workers, farmers and businesses.

• Americans will reap economic rewards from bold action on market access and other initiatives.
• Agriculture: WTO members have agreed to eliminate trade-distorting agricultural export subsidies, most of which are used by our foreign competitors, and expand market access for all U.S. farm products through tariff reductions and quota expansions.
• Manufacturing: WTO members have established a framework to expand market access in the DDA for manufactured products using a “tariff-equalizing” formula under which high tariffs will be reduced more than low tariffs. U.S. manufacturers will benefit since U.S. tariffs on industrial goods average 4 percent, while foreign tariffs average 40 percent.
• Services: WTO members have agreed to intensify negotiations to open their markets for services provided by U.S. businesses in areas such as telecommunications, entertainment, distribution, construction and engi-neering, professional services, and computer services.
• Trade Facilitation: WTO members have agreed to launch negotiations to reform WTO rules governing customs procedures. Measures under consideration would cut red tape, scrap unnecessary formalities and clarify customs procedures, all of which disproportionately burden small and medium-sized U.S. businesses.
• Additional trade expansion would deliver real results for many hard-working American families. For instance, a one-third reduction in existing trade barriers to goods and services would mean a $2,500 a year increase in the income of an average American family of four.

A successful conclusion to the DDA will help developing countries secure more rapid economic growth and reduce poverty.

• Trade liberalization helps to increase economic growth and reduce poverty in poor countries.
• During the 1990s, the income per person in “globalizing” developing coun-tries open to trade rose more than three-and-a-half times faster than in “nonglobalizing” developing countries.
• Newly industrialized economies such as those of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan have grown rapidly due in significant part to their openness to trade over the past four decades. By contrast, India, a country closed to trade until recently, witnessed stagnant growth rates of about 1 percent annually (in per-capita terms) in the 1960s and 1970s and experi-enced no decline in poverty levels over that period.
• The industrialized nations have committed themselves in the DDA to ensur-ing that poor countries are able to participate in the prosperity created by the world trading system.
• Because 75 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas, removing trade barriers in agriculture is an important step in reducing poverty. Industrialized nations have agreed to eliminate trade-distorting agricultural export subsi-dies, most often used by U.S. competitors, and to reform farm support programs in the DDA.
• WTO members have agreed to reduce barriers to manufactured exports from poor countries in the DDA. The World Bank estimates that manufac-tured goods now constitute 80 percent of the total exports of low-income countries.
• Opening up worldwide trade will improve the plight of the world’s poor. A successful conclusion to the DDA could lift more than 500 million people out of poverty and put $200 billion each year into the economies of developing countries.

Meaningful trade reforms in the Doha Round would stimulate worldwide increases in growth and income and lift millions out of poverty.