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A number of trade officials described the debate pitting the United States against China and India as one of principle and not just hard economics. Others blamed a lack of courage for the standoff.

"It is a jump in the dark," Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said before final efforts Tuesday. "You can't calculate until the very last situation all the hypotheses. If you do that (the round) will never finish. It will take two years, three years. It will probably be for a new generation."

The issue concerned a "special safeguard" developing countries led by China and India have demanded to deal with a sudden surge of imports or drop in prices.

While farm import safeguards currently exist in rich and poor countries, they are rarely used. The dispute over the current proposals concerns the threshold for when developing nations could sharply raise their tariffs, and how high those taxes could rise.

The United States had accused the two emerging powers of insisting on allowances to raise farm tariffs above even their current levels. That violates the spirit of the trade round, the U.S. and other agricultural exporters argued, because it is supposed to help poorer countries develop their economies by boosting their exports of farm produce.