In April 2011, then director-general Pascal Lamy "asked members to think hard about 'the consequences of throwing away ten years of solid multilateral work'.

"[5] A report to the WTO General Council by Lamy in May 2012 advocated "small steps, gradually moving forward the parts of the Doha Round which were mature, and re-thinking those where greater differences remained.

"[6] Adoption of the Bali Ministerial Declaration on 7 December 2013[7] for the first time successfully addressed bureaucratic barriers to commerce—a small part of the Doha Round agenda.

[8] In 2015, the United States government called for an end to the Doha round, and by 2017 it was declared "dead" by numerous commentators, including the Financial Times.

[11] Doha Round talks are overseen by the Trade Negotiations Committee (TNC), whose chair is the WTO’s director-general, currently Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

However, some countries, including the United States, wanted to expand the agriculture and services talks to allow trade-offs and thus achieve greater trade liberalization.

[16] However, by 2008, critics were charging that the round would expand a system of trade rules which were bad for development and interfered excessively with countries' domestic "policy space".

Also, Cancún ministerial chairman, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez, was faulted for ending the meeting when he did, instead of trying to move the talks into areas where some progress could have been made.

Developed countries' farm subsidies (both the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy and the US government agro-subsidies) became a major sticking point.

Starting in early 2004, US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick pushed for the resumption of negotiations by offering a proposal that would focus on market access, including an elimination of agricultural export subsidies.

[2] He also said that the Singapore issues could progress by negotiating on trade facilitation, considering further action on government procurement, and possibly dropping investment and competition.

The declaration gave fresh impetus for negotiators to try to finish a comprehensive set of global free trade rules by the end of 2006.

The WTO pushed back its self-imposed deadline to slightly precede the expiration of the US President's Congressional Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority.

[27] The July 2006 talks in Geneva failed to reach an agreement about reducing farming subsidies and lowering import taxes, and negotiations took months to resume.

[citation needed] In June 2007, negotiations within the Doha round broke down at a conference in Potsdam, as a major impasse occurred between the US, the EU, India and Brazil.

However, there were disagreements on issues including special protection for Chinese and Indian farmers and African and Caribbean banana imports to the EU.

[41] On a more optimistic note, India's Commerce Minister, Kamal Nath, said "I would only urge the director-general to treat this [failure of talks] as a pause, not a breakdown, to keep on the table what is there.

[47][48] The 11th Ministerial Conference held in Buenos Aires failed to reach agreement both on specific issues and on the continuance of the Doha Round.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, during his first term as president of Brazil, called several countries' leaders to urge them to renew negotiations.

[52] The director-general and chair of the Trade Negotiations Committee Pascal Lamy visited India to discuss possible solutions to the impasse.

[60] That hope having failed to eventuate, Pascal Lamy "reported to the General Council on 1 May 2012 that on the Doha Round, 'my conversations over the past few weeks with ministers and delegations have provided me with a sense that members wish to continue to explore any opportunities to gain the necessary traction and make tangible progress soon'.

The trade facilitation measures agreed in Bali could cut the cost of shipping goods around the world by more than 10%, by one estimate, raising global output by over $400 billion a year, with benefits flowing disproportionately to poorer countries.

"[66] The United States is being asked by the European Union (EU) and the developing countries, led by Brazil and India, to make a more generous offer for reducing trade-distorting domestic support for agriculture.

The United States is insisting that the EU and the developing countries agree to make more substantial reductions in tariffs and to limit the number of import-sensitive and special products that would be exempt from cuts.

[67] Brazil has emphasized reductions in trade-distorting domestic subsidies, especially by the United States (some of which it successfully challenged in the WTO U.S.-Brazil cotton dispute), while India has insisted on a large number of special products that would not be exposed to wider market opening.

[4] A major topic at the Doha ministerial regarded the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

At the December 2005 Hong Kong ministerial, members agreed to five S&D provisions for least developed countries (LDCs), including the duty-free and quota-free access.

[68] Duty-free and quota-free access (DFQFA) currently discussed covers 97% of tariff lines and if the US alone were to implement the initiative, it would potentially increase Least Developed Countries' (LDCs) exports by 10% (or $1bn).

Developing countries claim that they have had problems with the implementation of the agreements reached in the earlier Uruguay Round because of limited capacity or lack of technical assistance.

A study by the University of Michigan found that if all trade barriers in agriculture, services, and manufactures were reduced by 33% as a result of the Doha Development Agenda, there would be an increase in global welfare of $574.0 billion.