Cancun on the rocks would be a good name for a drink to celebrate reform of WTO. Like its predecessor GATT, it has failed to make progress towards genuine free trade. Its approach leaves a regulated system rightly deemed to be biased in favour of Rich Countries.

WTO can never succeed while it confounds free trade and fair trade. There is no such thing as regulated Fair Trade. Only a willing buyer meeting a willing seller is sustainable. Fair Trade is a concept conjured up by anti-capitalists, anti-globalists, politicians, lawyers and socialists. Their definition of 'fair' might not be widely shared. But free trade benefits those who engage in it.

A large share of blame lies with the rich countries. Anxious to protect their farmers, they deny poorer countries the right to sell in their markets, and dump subsidized goods onto world markets to undercut farmers in poor countries. France takes a large share of blame, but so do Germany and America. WTO should be banging their heads together and demanding no subsidies and open markets. Instead it has become a bureaucrat's pantomime. Hope for future liberalization of trade probably owes more now to bilateral deals than to the hitherto sustainable WTO circus.