Trade Talks On Insurance Failing

The Doha Round of international trade negotiations has been a serious failure for the insurance sector, said one leading property-casualty industry representative.

David Snyder, American Insurance Association assistant vice president, told a seminar in London sponsored by the British Institute of International Comparative Law that, “instead of increasing the consensus for free trade, the Round has served to divide the developed countries, especially the U.S. and E.U.”

The Doha Round of international talks started four years ago with the aim of liberalizing global trade rules and picking up where the Uruguay Round left off when the World Trade Organization was created.

Deadlines have come and gone and successive strategies have been unsuccessful at getting negotiations going, Mr. Snyder asserted.

“Most importantly, the packages that have been tabled to date are disappointing and wholly inadequate both as to quantity and quality,” he said.

Companies that were once invested heavily in the WTO process have now pulled back, believing that the WTO is increasingly irrelevant. “The sense of weakness and lack of commitment will also embolden the adversaries, making progress even that much more difficult to obtain,” Mr. Snyder said.

Services constitute the lion's share of the global economy, yet progress on global services negotiations has been relegated to a position for all practical purposes behind agriculture and manufacturing.

Mr. Snyder said the emotional connection with agriculture and manufacturing is understandable because most nations have not traditionally been comfortable with becoming totally dependent on others for food and basic manufactured goods.

“It is also understandable that there is the desire not to re-establish a mercantile system. But the significant damage resulting from a lack of progress on services, and particularly insurance, is shared by both developed and developing countries,” Mr. Snyder said.