The World

By Alan Beattie, the FT’s world trade editor

The Copenhagen conference will agree no treaty; the WTO ministerial in two weeks’ time will not even discuss the Doha round – roughly equivalent to staging Hamlet without the prince, Horatio, Ophelia, Rosencrantz or Guildenstern; the UN food security summit this week removed even a largely rhetorical pledge to end hunger and boost agricultural aid; Barack Obama has so far failed to elicit anything but vague hints on currency cooperation from Beijing.

Perhaps, as people often say, I’m too cynical. In the credit column, the US has agreed to re-enter negotiations on a trade treaty with four small economies, all of which have few trade barriers anyway and with two of whom it already has trade treaties. So that’s OK then.