The Doha Round of trade negotiations is dead, having succumbed to a combination of neglect, indifference, a lack of political will and, above all, a lack of leadership. WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy announced on July 24 in Geneva that the trade talks would be suspended indefinitely. Resquiescat in pace.

Of course, the coroner’s report is not official yet. The patient’s attending “doctors” — trade ministers and ambassadors from assorted countries — may yet find a way to break the impasse in negotiations and conclude a deal by December 2006, thereby beating the April 2007 deadline set by the U.S. Congress for submission and ratification. But that would require a monumental act of political will by all the major trading countries working together, and they don’t have it.