Overview ON THE EVE of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Fifth Ministerial Meeting

world's trade ministers—and the governments they represent—face enormous challenges. The global trade talks are stalled in several policy domains vital to developing countries—agricul-ture, nonfarm trade, access to patented drugs for countries without domestic drug industries, special and differential treatment, and dispute settlement. Nor is there much progress in other contentious areas, such as the " Singapore issues " of investment, competition, trade facilitation , and government procurement. At the same time, the global recovery continues to sputter. Although some signs of a turnaround have been evident in the United States, Europe seems to be losing momentum, and Japan appears positioned for another disappointing year. The Chinese economy, reinforced by a positive performance in East Asia in 2002, continues to bustle along, but concerns over Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and lost export momentum in the face of the world slowdown haunted the regional outlook. South Asia continues to grow more rapidly than the world average. Latin America is showing signs of an upturn, driven in part by renewed confidence in Brazil, a tentative rebound in Argentina, and an increase in Mex-ico's growth; however, the recession in the República Bolivariana de Venezuela, when coupled with political difficulties in the An-dean countries, continues to weigh down regional performance. Africa, suffering from low commodity prices, is growing slowly; although faster than in the 1980s and 1990s, today's growth is far short of the pace necessary to make significant dents in the poverty head-count or to achieve the Millennium Development Goals in health and education. War has adversely affected regional performance in the Middle East and North Africa; sluggish performance in Europe, especially Germany, has adversely affected many countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Even though progress on trade would undoubtedly boost investor confidence , politicians coping with slow growth and high unemployment at home have been finding it more difficult to risk alienating influential constituencies by accepting bold proposals in the world trade talks. The outlook for the remainder of this year and for 2004, though somewhat improved, is unlikely to produce growth strong enough to cut sharply into unemployment rates (figure 1). Uncertainty in the global environment remains unusually high. Structural problems persist— overcapacity in high-tech industries globally, rising twin deficits in the U.S. fiscal and current accounts, and lingering bad loans in Japanese and (to a lesser extent) European banks. Other problems may prove more transitory. The cessation of conflict in …