That suspension is a sorry indictment of the politicians who failed to reach a deal. But it also reflected badly on their fondue buddies at Davos: the global business elite. Previous trade deals, such as the Uruguay round completed in 1994, have clicked because of the lobbying power of exporters: in their eagerness to conquer new markets abroad, they have put pressure on their own governments to open up at home. But in this round, with a few honourable exceptions, the big exporters have lacked conviction. The passionate intensity has come instead from the opponents of the round, such as South Korean rice farmers, who want to keep their market shut tight, or Texan cotton growers, who want to hang on to their handouts.

Why have globalisation’s biggest beneficiaries been so slow to look up from their BlackBerries and take on the pitchfork protectionists? It is partly because they are tired. China’s entry into the WTO in 2001 felt like a trade round in itself. Some are also a bit scared: companies anxious about their public image hesitate to cheer for an organisation that some still hold responsible for drowning sea turtles in shrimp nets or denying generic medicines to the poor.

Mostly, however, businessmen have neglected Doha because they are bored, calculating that there is nothing much in the talks for them. The round is still gnawing at the bits of trade—cotton, grains, livestock, milk and so on—that were too tough for previous rounds to digest. But farming now accounts for less than 2% of the European and American economies. The stakes appeared too small for anyone but farmers to care.

Down from the mountain top

Six months of silence show how short-sighted that calculation was. The monied men and women at Davos owe their prosperity to the trading system the WTO oversees. But when negotiations stop, the WTO itself stagnates. Litigation begins to collect, like algae on a still pond. This week, for example, the European Union joined Canada and a bunch of others in making a formal complaint about America’s corn subsidies.

Some businessmen smugly imagine that if the WTO talks fail, they can get what they want from more exclusive deals, which pick trading partners off in ones, twos or threes. America, for example, has just finished another round of talks with South Korea. But by playing favourites and discriminating against everyone else, such deals cut against the grain of globalisation. Elaborate supply chains now span many borders: South Korean goods may be assembled in China, using machines from Japan. More often than not, a bilateral deal unblocks one trade route only to silt up its tributaries. Besides, if the Doha round is not revived, America’s Congress is unlikely to renew the trade negotiating authority that allows the president to seal a deal with South Korea or anyone else.

This weekend provides businessmen with the perfect opportunity to give ministers a sense of perspective. They were, after all, responsible for about $13 trillion of trade in 2005. The WTO underpins this success. Its future should not be jeopardised for the sake of a few billion dollars of soyabean subsidies or a few million tonnes of beef imports.

Indeed, from the heady heights of Davos, this trade round’s preoccupation with farming—the oldest of old-economy businesses—looks absurd. But developing countries, now about two-thirds of the WTO’s membership, will not talk about anything else until the organisation has finished talking about agriculture. No other set of concerns can succeed those of the Doha round, until the round itself succeeds. And that will not happen until the politicians come down a few thousand feet to lakeside Geneva, where the real work can get done.

© The Economist Newspaper Limited 2007