Perspectives on the WTO Doha Development Agenda
Multilateral Trade Negotiations

October 21, 2005
University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is organizing a conference on “Perspectives on the WTO Doha Development Agenda Multilateral Trade Negotiations,” to be held in Ann Arbor, Michigan on Friday, October 21, 2005.  The conference is being hosted by the International Policy Center of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, together with the Department of Economics and the Law School.   The purpose of the conference is to provide a forum to discuss the most important issues to be addressed during the December 2005 Ministerial Meeting of the WTO in Hong Kong.

Robert M. Stern, Professor of Economics and Public Policy, is directing the arrangements for the conference in collaboration with Barbara Peitsch of the William Davidson Institute.   A number of Michigan faculty and staff will be represented at the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong, as they were at the September 2003 WTO Cancun Ministerial.  A series of position papers are being commissioned on the WTO negotiating issues and will be made available to conference participants and to government officials and the media at the Hong Kong Ministerial. 

The WTO conference will include USTR Ambassador Robert Portman (invited) and  present and former Assistant USTRs, WTO Ambassadors and Representatives from China and Sub-Saharan Africa, trade officials from Brazil, Canada, the European Union, India, and Panama, private-sector representatives from General Motors and Merck & Co., legal staff from Butzel Long and Mayer Brown Rowe and Maw, staff from Oxfam America and the AFL/CIO, and several academic trade specialists.  The conference program is posted on www.FordSchool.umich.edu/rsie/conferences.  

The conference is open to interested staff members of government agencies and international organizations, private-sector business and legal firms, NGOs, and academic trade specialists.