Ignorance of history lies at the root of this malaise in which we find ourselves

The reason we must all take an active interest in global trade policy generally, and specifically the current Doha round, is that the implications and consequences go well beyond purely commercial activity, and indeed beyond economics.

In 1937, Cordell Hull, US president Franklin D. Roosevelt's secretary of state, wrote of his 'belief that enduring peace and the welfare of nations are indissolubly connected with friendliness, fairness, equality and the maximum practicable degree of freedom in international trade'.

This has often been quoted, including in communiques from the Evian Group, but it is worth quoting over and over again. Indeed, I would like to think of a world in which all political leaders would have these words engraved and prominently displayed.

Part of the problem for the malaise in which we find ourselves is that there seems to be fairly widespread ignorance of history, specifically with respect to the origins of the global rules-based multilateral trading system.

Following the Great Depression of 1929, countries engaged in extensive trade wars throughout the 1930s, leading to international economic anarchy, which in turn caused growth to plummet and unemployment to surge.

From the ashes of the second world war, the architects of the global trading system sought to prevent a repetition of what had occurred mainly through the strengthening of both principles and institutions of international economic activity.