Contribution of Doha Round in the promotion of cultural industry trade



Contribution of Doha Round in the promotion of cultural industry trade

Abstract

This paper discusses the problems faced by cultural industry in the era of globalization and historical development in the area of promoting cultural industry trade by WTO, and talks about United States and European Union stance in promoting cultural industry trade. This paper also focuses a lot on Doha Round, which was initiated By World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, with the aim of improving trade liberalization of cultural and noncultural industry goods. The effect of stalled Doha round on the world gross product is also been discussed in this paper. Paper recommends few new strategy for WTO, in order to achieve the objective of Doha Round, like focusing on subsector in cultural industry, redefining cultural exception definition in order to find some common ground in promoting cultural industry, and by making safeguard option illegal for member countries, so the member countries would be stopped from using self-centered policy, which is counterproductive for gross world product in the long run.



Table of Content

Introduction1

Discussion2

Recommendations7

Conclusion9

References10

Introduction

The effect of globalization on the cultural identities is one of the major issue (Theodor W Adorno, 2001), which requires a lot of attention by the policy maker around the world, in order to reach a compromised. An effort was made by the WTO in 2001, Doha Round, is a trade negotiation round, with the main objective to reducing trade barriers for agricultural and manufactured product, in addition to this, General Agreement on trade in service (GATS) and Trade-Related Aspect of Intellectual Property Right (TRIPS) to enhance the multilateral trading system to service sector as well as to promote cultural industries. After several negotiations round, the WTO was not able to make any progress on trade liberalization. In 2008, no compromise was reached between U.S, China and India on agricultural import rule, as result the negotiation stalled, and it is still uncertain that when negotiation are again going to start in the future.

There have been no changes in the strategy to resolve this issue, and no work has been done to reach an agreement to promote trade liberalization of cultural good and services within the framework of the WTO. Despite of many negotiation and debate on cultural diversity within the WTO, which give us clear evidence of existence of this issue, and that must be an answer using the framework of the WTO. After several ministerial negotiations, many norms related to cultural good and service are drawn up, but continuous resistance by its member countries, which consider these cultural goods and services different from other tradable goods and services in many ways.

Before evaluating WTO contribution in promoting cultural industry, let's look at the main definition of what exactly the cultural industry is and historical development in promoting cultural industry trade by WTO.

Cultural industries produce those goods and service which have certain cultural attributes, purpose and convey cultural expression; irrespective of commercial value those products have ...