An Open Letter to President Obama on Doha

August 31, 2011

Mr. Barack Obama

President of the United States

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

As the window of opportunity for a robust deal on Doha Round is closing, with the United States now about to enter into an election mode, we make an appeal for Presidential leadership in the United States to put Doha into closure along with the three Free Trade Agreements that finally seem close to passage by bipartisan agreement.

The fear of the labour unions that trade with the poor countries produces poor in the rich countries is mistaken. The demand of the business lobbies that want ever more concessions from others is excessive. The contention of some experts that the gains from Doha are minuscule is flawed in neglecting the costs of the failure of Doha and the ensuing damage to the WTO. The retribution by a protectionist public is greatly exaggerated: many jobs today depend on both exports and imports and the polls reflect that.

President Obama: you have not failed to step up to the plate on issues like the repeal of the Don’t Ask and Don’t Tell policy in the armed forces. You can do so again to carry Doha past the finish line. You were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the multilateralism that you promised. You can earn it with leadership on Doha, a multilateral venture par excellence.

Jagdish Bhagwati, Columbia University and CFR

Claude Barfield, AEI

Herminio Blanco, Former Secretary of Commerce and Industry, Mexico

Hugh Corbet, Cordell Hull Institute, Washington DC

W. Max Corden, University of Melbourne, Australia

Donald R. Davis, Columbia University

Alan Deardorff, Michigan University, Ann Arbor

Vivek Dehejia, Carleton University, Canada

Barry Desker, NTU and Former Ambassador to Indonesia, Singapore

Elias Dinopoulos, University of Florida

Peter Drysdale, Australian National University

Sebastian Edwards, UCLA

Frederick Erixon, ECIPE, Brussels

Simon Evenett, St. Gallen, Switzerland

Robert Feenstra, UC Davis

Ronald Findlay, Columbia University

K.C. Fung, UCSC

Ross Garnaut, University of Melbourne, Australia

Jan Willem Gunning, VU University of Amsterdam

Tatsuo Hatta, Osaka University and GRIPS

Mats Hellström, Former Minister of Foreign Trade, Sweden

Hal Hill, Australian National University

Douglas Irwin, Dartmouth College

Peter Kleen, ECIPE, Brussels

Pravin Krishna, SAIS and Johns Hopkins University

Anne Krueger, SAIS

Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, ECIPE, Brussels

Phil Levy, AEI

Rodney Ludema, Georgetown University

Petros Mavroidis, Columbia University and Neuchatel, Switzerland

Patrick Messerlin, Sciences Po, France

Devashish Mitra, Syracuse University

Piyusha Mutreja, Syracuse University

Leif Pagrotsky, Sveriges Riksbank and Former Minister of Foreign Trade, Sweden

Arvind Panagariya, Columbia University and Brookings Institution

Lourenco Paz, Syracuse University

Raymond Riezman, University of Iowa

Tom Prusa, Rutgers University

Peter Rosendorff, New York University

Razeen Sally, ECIPE, Brussels

André Sapir, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels

Robert Stern, Michigan University and UC Berkeley

Subidey Togan, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

Tony Venables, Oxford University

Shang-Jin Wei, Columbia Business School

David Weinstein, Columbia University

John Whalley, University of Western Ontario, Canada

Kar-yiu Wong, University of Washington