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After a bitter standoff at a global trade meeting in Mexico last year, free-trade advocates feared that progress toward a new multilateral agreement might grind to a halt. Now, after marathon talks in Geneva, rich and poor nations have agreed to keep the process alive.

How alive remains to be seen.

The European Union offered to end export subsidies for its farmers, subsidies that make it virtually impossible for farmers in developing countries to compete. The United States, feeling pressure to cut $12 billion in farm subsidies that also cause pain abroad and benefit mostly rich farmers at home, promised to shrink them in return for concessions by developing countries that maintain high tariffs on manufactured goods and services.

But the details are yet to come after more negotiations, which no doubt will be strenuous.

One reason for the tentative nature of the Geneva compromise is governments' reluctance to offend influential domestic constituencies. So at least until after the US presidential election in November, there's unlikely to be any less pain felt, for example, by West African cotton growers, who have been driven to the wall by US subsidies to cotton growers, currently about $4 billion a year. These subsidies enable US exporters to undersell even low-cost producers abroad.

Poor countries won't be the only winners if further talks succeed. Worldwide average import tariffs on manufactured goods are about 40 percent, 10 times the average US rate. American exporters thus would win greater market access if developing countries keep a promise to slash tariffs on these goods in return for lower farm subsidies.

The next global summit meeting is scheduled for late next year in Hong Kong. A breakthrough is badly needed if trade is to expand rather to contract. Lowering steep rich-country farm subsidies would do more to improve peoples' lives in poor countries than direct foreign aid, and it might persuade US trading partners that America's professed commitment to market-driven trade is not a sham. And it would save American taxpayers a bundle.

Whoever wins the presidency in November will confront a new reality that cannot be wished away: A growing number of emerging powers - most prominently Brazil, India and China - are no longer afraid to take a hard line against rich countries' trade policies.

That new toughness, very much in evidence at last year's Mexico summit meeting, helps to explain what happened this year in Geneva: America, Europe and Japan finally acted on the truth that, even if leveling the playing field with their less wealthy trading partners creates political problems at home, the consequences of not doing it - rising  protectionism and, possibly, a global recession - would be much worse.

Marko Mlikotin is president of River City Communications in Folsom, California

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New York Times, 11/24/04