It was supposed to be the development round. Because developing countries got so little in the last round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations, the talks launched seven years ago in Doha, Qatar, were intended to deliver them more benefits.

In some respects, Doha's collapse - the final meeting took place in Geneva - reflected just how far development has actually gone. The new assertiveness of fast-growing economies such as Brazil, China and India made it harder for the rich countries to muscle their way through trade talks as they once did.

It's less clear, though, that this reflects the sort of Third Worldism that was talked about back in the 1960s and 1970s. The renewed confidence of these players indicates less a common agenda among developing countries, than a determination of their governments to look out for their own interests.

In the short term, the end to Doha might pass with nary a notice in much of the world. The talks were aimed less at reducing tariffs and subsidies from current levels, than at preventing them being raised in the future.

Negotiations

As a consequence, countries may now press ahead with bilateral trade negotiations, bypassing the WTO. This will probably hurt the WTO as an organisation, but it might not do the principle of free trade any harm. Of course, small countries dependent on open trade, like our own, may feel a bit more friendless. But they might not have felt that the WTO's track record made it much of a friend anyhow. The sky is not about to fall.

Looking down the road, the impact of Doha's failure may be more worrying. With the world economy slowing, and protectionist sentiment rising in some of the industrial countries, the tide may begin to turn against free trade.

The Geneva meeting took place with the US presidential election breathing down its neck. Not only will there now be too little time to revive the trade talks before the election, but the next president may well be more protectionist than the current one.

The next US Congress will almost certainly have a lot more protectionist members.

Economic historians are acutely aware that the Great Depression resulted from countries turning increasingly against free trade, lengthening what might have been a short financial crisis.

They thus see the collapse of Doha as a worrying omen. If the world economy does continue slowing — worse, should the US actually go into recession — there is the possibility that populist politicians will begin pulling up drawbridges.

Favourable conditions

We are still a good way from that sort of scenario. There is a lot of openness in the world economy, and conditions remain favourable to free trade. Nonetheless, the political winds are changing. The WTO wanted to use Doha to limit how much future governments could do to reverse these conditions. In that respect, the collapse of Doha does not come at the most propitious time.

This seems like yet another way we are paying a price for the excesses and failures of the 1990s. If, during the time its economy was booming the US had shown more leadership and spearheaded trade talks that really brought gains to developing countries, they might not have reached the point of having to defend their interests so jealously. Instead, the WTO system was manipulated by rich countries - not least, the US - to advance their interests. The effort to make the WTO more inclusive at Doha turned out to have come too late.

Were the world economy ever to enter another period of protectionism, historians might therefore date the end of the liberal regime to Seattle, 1999.

John Rapley is president of Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI) and independent think-tank affiliated to the UWI, Mona.