Getting past the WTO deadlock: the plurilateral option?

The WTO’s Doha Development Agenda (DDA) negotiations are blocked. After repeated attempts to make progress, trade ministers have called for exploring new approaches to negotiations. This has been interpreted by some as clearing the way for plurilateral negotiations between subsets of like-minded WTO members and that need not apply or benefit all WTO members. This paper discusses a number of questions that arise with respect to plurilateral agreements and argues that in light of the very low probability of new plurilateral agreements being accepted by WTO members the focus should be on the impact of preferential trade agreements and how these can be better accommodated in the multilateral trading system.