Both China and WTO members will need to show more flexibility in future.
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This rule means that any deal between a smaller group must be applied to all WTO members, even if they do not reciprocate.
On Wednesday, two days after America had made its latest offer, a meeting of trade ministers from key WTO members broke up with few signs of progress.
According to the official timetable, all WTO members, except the very poorest, were supposed to have made initial offers on what services they would liberalise two years ago.
The sooner Europe and Japan come up with their own proposals on agriculture, the easier they will find it to convince other WTO members that they are negotiating from a position of goodwill.
President Obama stressed the need for Russia to work with other WTO members to close out the last remaining issues and bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion by the end of this year.
America's Mr Zoellick aims to portray the American concession as no more than an agreement to clarify existing rules, but that may not be how other WTO members see it or, more importantly, the American Congress.
If there is no agreement, what will the WTO's members leave on the table?
WTO's members will decide by July whether they are ready to begin a new round in November.
WTO's members are still keen to keep domestic matters to themselves, so farm support enters the organisation's negotiating agenda only peripherally.
It has not been a good year for the WTO, whose members failed to agree earlier this year on who should be its new director general.
If persuading the 15 members of the EU is going to be difficult, and winning agreement among all 147 members of the WTO still harder, then persuading the 535 members of Congress to keep their hands off a trade bill will be all but impossible.
WTO's 134 members, 29 do not even have missions at its headquarters in Geneva.
WTO's 132 members, all but three (Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea) are members of some regional trade club.
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The ASEAN free-trade agreement itself is only legal under WTO rules because its members are developing countries entitled to special treatment.
WTO's 132 members, issued in Singapore in 1996 and reaffirmed last week.
WTO's 135 members, notably the European Union, have yet to agree entry terms with China, and America's Congress has to endorse the deal.
Oh, and the other 130 members of the WTO will have a thing or two to say as well.
That is one reason why Mr Bush's newest proposal is likely to be greeted with suspicion by some members of the WTO.
On Monday October 10th, Rob Portman, the country's trade representative, proposed substantial cuts to rich-world agricultural supports at a meeting of ministers from 15 key members of the WTO.
Russia political pundits believe that Putin is more interested in created a free trade zone within Eurasia, tapping small and poor nations like Belarus and even Kazakhstan, both not members of the WTO.
Some observers believe that India has more to fear from the relaxing of import duties with other members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) than it does from Nepal.
One of the areas Lamy says the WTO is reviewing is whether it needs to offer up multiple topics to 153 members for agreement.
Most members have maintained their commitment to resist protectionism, including by addressing unfair trade practices through WTO-consistent trade remedy measures rather than ad-hoc policy responses.
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