Cancún means "snakepit" in the local Mayan language, and it lived up to its name as the host of an important World Trade Organization meeting that began last week. Rather than tackling the problem of their high agricultural tariffs and lavish farm subsidies, which victimize farmers in poorer nations, a number of rich nations derailed the talks.

The failure by 146 trade delegates to reach an agreement in Mexico is a serious blow to the global economy. And contrary to the mindless cheering with which the breakdown was greeted by anti-globalization protesters at Cancún, the world's poorest and most vulnerable nations will suffer most. It is a bitter irony that the chief architects of this failure were nations like Japan, Korea and European Union members, themselves adverisements for the prosperity afforded by increased global trade.

The Cancún meeting came at the midpoint of the WTO's "development round" of trade liberalization talks, one that began two years ago with an eye toward extending the benefits of freer trade and markets to poorer countries. The principal demand of these developing nations, led at Cancún by Brazil, has been an end to high tariffs and agricultural subsidies in the developed world, and rightly so. Poor nations find it hard to compete against rich nations' farmers, who get more than $300 billion in government handouts a year.

The talks appeared to break down suddenly on the issue of whether the WTO should extend its rule-making jurisdiction into such new areas as foreign investment. But in truth, there was nothing abrupt about the Cancún meltdown. The Japanese and Europeans had devised this demand for an unwieldy and unnecessary expansion of the WTO's mandate as a poison pill - to deflect any attempts to get them to turn their backs on their powerful farm lobbies. Their plan worked.

The American role at Cancún was disappointingly muted. The Bush administration had little interest in the proposal to expand the WTO's authority, but the American farm lobby is split between those who want to profit from greater access to foreign markets and less efficient sectors that demand continued coddling from Washington. That is one reason the United States made the unfortunate decision to side with the more protectionist Europeans in Cancún, a position that left American trade representatives playing defense on subsidies rather than taking a creative stance, alongside Brazil, on lowering trade barriers. This was an unfortunate subject on which to show some rare trans-Atlantic solidarity. The resulting "coalition of the unwilling" lent the talks an unfortunate north-versus-south cast.

Any hope that the United States would take the moral high ground at Cancún and reclaim its historic leadership in pressing for freer trade, was further dashed by the disgraceful manner in which the American negotiators rebuffed the rightful demands of West African nations that the United States commit itself to a clear phasing out of its harmful cotton subsidies. American business and labor groups, not to mention taxpayers, should be enraged that the administration seems more solicitous of protecting the most indefensible segment of U.S. protectionism rather than of protecting the national interest by promoting economic growth through trade.

For struggling cotton farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, and for millions of others in the developing world whose lives would benefit from the further lowering of trade barriers, the failure of Cancún amounts to a crushing message from the developed world - one of callous indifference.