The 4th WTO Ministerial Conference, held during 2001 in Doha, Qatar launched the Doha Development Round of negotiations. There are four major areas of negotiation in the Doha round: Agriculture, Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA), Services, and Trade Facilitation, as well as other areas such as Rules and Dispute Settlement.

The main goal of NAMA is to expand industrial goods market access through the liberalization of tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. The United States maintains that such liberalization will stimulate economic growth, raise incomes and lower taxes, stimulate the growth of better-paying jobs, reduce poverty, and cut costs for businesses and consumers in the United States and around the world.

To achieve these goals, the United States is pushing for ambitious trade liberalization through the three NAMA ‘modalities’ under negotiation by the WTO Membership: tariff-cutting formula, sectoral tariff initiatives, as well as non-tariff trade barrier initiatives in the Doha negotiations.