IT TOOK every bit of the allotted time and then some. In the wee hours of December 6th the members of the World Trade Organisation rose to applaud the successful conclusion of the first multilateral trade agreement negotiated at the WTO. The deal, reached at a ministerial conference on the island of Bali, in Indonesia, is the first fruit to be borne of the long-barren Doha round of international trade talks. But the agreement leaves the future of global talks cloudier than might have been hoped. Casual observers might be surprised to learn Doha was not already dead, so long and treacherous was the road to the round’s conclusion. Doha, which began in 2001, suffered near-fatal breakdowns in 2003 and 2008. When trade officials worked to resuscitate discussions in 2012 they opted to keep the agenda as simple and attractive as possible. Even so, talks almost collapsed on multiple occasions. Cuba nearly sank an agreement at the eleventh hour, by threatening to oppose any deal that failed to chip away at America’s embargo of the small economy. Over the past few months Roberto Azevedo (pictured above, to the left, with the meeting's host, Indonesia's trade minister), who took over the job of Director-General of the WTO in September, repeatedly warned that this or that disagreement posed a mortal threat to the Bali package. Yet at each turn Mr Azevedo kept the parties at the table until compromise could be reached.

At the heart of the deal is an agreement on “trade facilitation”, or measures to reduce trade costs by cutting red tape in customs procedures. Trade facilitation could cut global trade costs by more than 10%, by one estimate, raising annual global output by over $400 billion, with benefits flowing disproportionately to developing economies. It nonetheless proved a tricky item to settle. Some poorer countries raised concerns about their ability to make the required capacity upgrades, and talks briefly stalled as arrangements for assistance were worked out.

Yet agriculture proved the sorest subject, as ever. Disagreement spanned several issues, the most contentious of which concerned agriculture subsidies. India, its government facing a general election next year, spearheaded an effort to prevent emerging markets from facing challenges at the WTO over subsidies granted to farmers under the aegis of “food security” measures. In the months leading up to the Bali meeting India wrung substantial concessions from rich-world economies, including a four-year “peace clause” that would have granted developing countries protections from such challenges. Not satisfied with that, India later threatened to derail talks unless the issue was reopened. India ultimately won an indefinite waiver, good until a permanent solution can be reached.

Several other disputes received similar papering over. Indeed, while trade facilitation counts as a meaningful achievement, the deal is unlikely to convince sceptics that the multilateral process can produce ambitious reforms—not while those least committed to progress, like India in this case, can threaten to sink an entire agreement unless their demands are met.

Relief at having finally reached a WTO deal will therefore turn quickly to hand-wringing over what should follow. It will fall to Mr Azevedo to read the mood of the membership and chart a course forward. He will emerge from this process with new credibility and a trust in his ability to choose attainable goals. But he will quickly have to make two key decisions: what issues to press and how to achieve them.

Plenty of bullet points remain on the Doha agenda. They include further progress on matters, like the food security waiver, that received inconclusive treatment at Bali, and other long-simmering issues like progress on ending agricultural subsidies altogether. Yet plowing back into such territory risks wasting the momentum of the Bali deal. Mr Azevedo might instead seek to open discussions on fresher subjects. Investment issues provide one possibility; the WTO could work to rein in investment subsidies and set ground rules for when countries can invest across borders without interference. Trade in environmental goods and services, which covers everything from air filters to environmental consulting, is also expected to take centre-stage.

Mr Azevedo will have a more difficult decision in choosing which items to keep on the multilateral docket, for negotiation among all WTO members, and which to let slip into “plurilateral” deals. Plurilaterals can proceed within the WTO, and allow coalitions of willing countries to agree deals that apply only to signatories, and not to all members. Agreements on services and on IT that are now under discussion fall into this category. China’s minister of commerce used a speech in Bali to suggest it supported the use of plurilaterals to move liberalisation forward. It is possible that Bali, while enhancing the role of the WTO as a forum for negotiations, nonetheless reinforced the difficulty in achieving ambitious multilateral reforms.

Still, the landscape for international trade talks looks much different with a Bali deal than without one. The completion of a WTO agreement reflects a broad appetite for trade integration and reduces the risk that regional deals degenerate into a world of Balkanised trade. Not before time.

(Picture credit: AFP)