Peter Mandelson is right to call this the last chance to save world trade talks for three or four years. If that chance hasn’t gone already, that is. Many would say, as the European Union’s trade commissioner meets his counterparts in Washington today, that the world trade talks are dead beyond dispute.

Nothing has happened since the Doha round of talks collapsed in July to make their resurrection look easier — and the Democrats’ victory in winning control of both houses of Congress has made this more difficult. Influential new Democrat members of the Senate and the House of Representatives appear to have inherited their party’s old protectionist reflexes, although Mandelson, speaking this weekend from the US, argues that they do “want the US to re-engage with the world” and have an eye on re-election in 2008.

If there is a sliver of a reason for hope, it stems from the sense of shock that followed the collapse in countries that professed to prefer no deal to a weak deal. But the cause may also benefit from the urgency felt by Tony Blair and President Bush to extract achievements from their dwindling time in office. In Doha’s favour, it is still a less formidable task than bringing stability to Iraq.

All the big players were to blame for the collapse last summer: the US, EU, Japan, India and Brazil. The EU tried hard to paint the US as the villain, helped by Bush’s 2002 Farm Bill, one of the worst measures of his presidency, which handed $190 billion (£97 billion) to US agriculture over a decade. But Bush has otherwise been committed firmly to the cause of free trade. The EU Common Agricultural Policy played a part in the failure; so did Japan’s reverence for its small farmers, while Brazil and India refused to open up industrial markets until the farming deadlock gave way.

It was an extraordinary spectacle: so many countries, industrialised or getting there fast, paralysed by the fear of shaking up farming communities, even where they are a tiny part of the economy.

It didn’t help that the Doha talks were billed as the Development Round. Free trade deals are one of the best tools the world has deployed to help poorer countries to develop, but they are too broad and complex to be a substitute for targeted development and aid programmes. Yet the “development” label encouraged some of the large emerging economies to feel that they were owed everything and need concede nothing.

And now? Mandelson is right to say that “the numbers [mooted by each side] are not that far apart — that is the untold story of this round”. Since July, there have been quiet talks between the main players to explore any possible shifts. Given that the US-EU clash was one of the sticking points, a lot hangs on this week’s talks, which include a summit between Bush and José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission.

Any tiny chance of salvaging the talks depends on progress in the next few weeks, because President Bush’s “fast track” negotiating authority from Congress runs out in June. Before then, Congress must accept his trade Bills entirely or reject them outright; after that, unless it renews the authority, it can amend them clause by clause, an irresistible temptation that means death for the legislation.

Even though there is no chance of concluding the talks before June, it is just possible, in theory, that Congress may be so impressed by progress made that it renews Bush’s authority. But it is easy to imagine that this new Congress would not feel like doing Bush many favours, let alone one of which it is so suspicious. Nor does the hope of progress take account of the French elections in late spring, which could stall any revised offer that the EU might make.

The result of a final burial of Doha would not be the end of free trade, but a splintering of the project into dozens of separate bilateral deals, an art in which both the EU and the Bush Administration are already expert.

Some of these are genuinely liberalising; in many, the benefits are opaque; others are a crochet of special interests. None is a good substitute for Doha.

In that light, Mandelson’s mission looks like a quixotic attempt to make the case for free trade, while knowing that the cause of saving Doha this year is probably already lost.

But it is a pitch worth making, even if time and elections are against it.

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