Protectionism 'will make things worse during crisis'

Pascal Lamy, the director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), wants to wrench the discussion perhaps back from national interest to the more prosaic and some say esoteric subject of multilateral trade negotiations, otherwise called the Doha Round.

The Doha Round is a series of global negotiations launched by the WTO in Doha in 2001.

Its goal was to cut barriers to global trade, including farm subsidies around the world. The talks have dragged on, and on, and off, and on for eight years in places like Cancun, Geneva, Paris, Hong Kong, and Potsdam. The most recent round of negotiations took place in Geneva this past summer. They were not successful after nine days.

In the 1980s, Lamy worked as an adviser to France's finance minister and prime minister, and the presidency of Francois Mitterrand. When Credit Lyonnais got into difficulty in the '90s, Lamy led the rescue team, later becoming the bank's chief executive. Then followed five years as the European Union commissioner.

CNN's Richard Quest interviews Pascal Lamy.

RICHARD QUEST: Sir, getting the Doha Round started or to some sort of conclusion may be important, but it's becoming extremely unlikely in the current environment.

PASCAL LAMY: Well, you're right. The current environment leads some governments to think that protectionism would be the right solution, which obviously is not the case. If governments were - should become protectionist, it would make things worse. And the first thing you have to do in the present crisis is make sure you don't make things worse.

But there's a difference between protectionism, which most would agree, but not wishing to engage in multilateralism, because a lot of people just simply say, I have no wish to sit down and talk about reducing trade barriers at this point in time.

They've been doing that for quite a long time and we've gone 80 per cent of the way. And the question is, with this present crisis, isn't the remaining 20 per cent the low-hanging fruit, the thing we - they have to do together to cope better with this crisis.

Are you confident that you could get anything like the talks started again?

I'm sure following the very strong prescription by G-20 leaders that they will not recourse to protectionism, and that they will strive to conclude the negotiations, I'm sure of their intentions.

The question is, whether this really happens and the World Trade Organisation is there to help them doing this.

But you can't force them, you can't drag them to the table.

At what point are you basically going to throw up your hands and call it a day on the Doha Round, we've failed, it ain't going to happen?

Well, I wouldn't say that because it is not the reality.

Again, we've done the largest part of the way towards the conclusion, and mind you, developing countries who insisted for this round to take place, who want the rules of international trade to be rebalanced so that they can grow, will not accept that.

And if you look at the world economy today, where is there growth left? In developing emerging countries, who depend more than others on trade.

President Obama in the White House, we can't be certain which way he wants to move on this at the moment. Whatever was said in the campaign that hinted towards protectionism or at least a less multilateral approach can't necessarily be taken into government.

You're absolutely correct. We are still waiting for the trade policy stance of the new Obama administration. Understandably it takes a bit of time, but all WTO members are very eager to know what the policy will be.

I hope, I hope that as was in the past the US will keep the leadership in keeping trade open. I hope, I have no certainty, not least because, as you know, his trade negotiator hasn't yet been confirmed by the Senate.

But I'll try to do my best to convince them that for the interest of the US and give the sort of multilateralist stance which the Obama administration takes in other issues, they do the same on trade.