In this blog, GEG’s Carolyn Deere-Birkbeck argues that Ministers should use this Ministerial Conference to take leadership and push discussion of institutional reform and governance higher up the multilateral trade system’s official agenda.
With just over one week remaining before the Seventh WTO Ministerial Conference (30 November – 2 December 2009), WTO reform and the functioning of the [...]
The Global Economic Governance Programme is pleased to announce the release of a discussion draft of Strengthening Multilateralism: A Mapping of Proposals on WTO Reform and Global Trade Governance, by Carolyn Deere-Birkbeck and Catherine Monagle, and jointly published with the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD).
If we had the numbers in front of us, what would a fair “global-bang-for-the-buck” stimulus package look like? George Gray Molina argues that the bailout debate is about different things in the developed and developing worlds, making the global stimulus question one of politics, not technical detail.
Guest blogger Sylvia Ostry reflects on the challenges for the trade system amidst the financial crisis
If there was ever any doubt about the close, even intimate, relationship between trade and finance in the global economy, the statement issued by the G20 leaders on 15 November 2008 put that doubt to rest. In that document – wide ranging and complex – the G20 tasked several national and international organisations with implementing enunciated principles for reform of financial markets and an initial set of specific measures, including high-priority actions to be completed by the end of March 2009.
Guest blogger Dominique Njinkeu sets out the challenges facing Africa in the current economic crisis, highlights the and makes the case for a stimulus package for Africa to address shrinking trade.
The current global downturn is a crisis emanating from advanced economies rather than from bad policies on the part of Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. African economies will nevertheless be affected through a variety of international trade-related channels, including reduced commodities prices and exports receipts, foreign direct investment and equity flows, exchange rate fluctuations, and remittances. Trade is already shrinking, growth declining, and unemployment rising. The associated losses for SSA countries are forecasted at over USD 50 billion in 2008-2009. Unless appropriate solutions are identified and swiftly implemented, the crisis risks undermining the achievements of three decades of policy reform, thus further reducing the possibility of achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals. Fortunately, such solutions exist that could even turn the crisis into opportunity for African countries.
Roberto Bouzas
The challenges faced by developing countries and sustainable development regarding global economic governance are not substantially different from those faced by the developed world. In fact, both groups of countries share common challenges.
The first and most urgent challenge is to revive the multilateral trade regime. In the last half century, trade has been the policy area in which the international community has made the most strident progress towards cooperation. In the last decade, however, the effectiveness of the international trade regime has eroded under the weight of a changing international and domestic landscape (a new balance of power, an expanded membership, the emergence of new constituencies, and the development of uncharted regulatory areas). These structural transformations were underway well in advance of the financial crisis, but a creeping recession and mounting protectionist pressures have sharply deepened existing tensions.
Guest blogger Shuaihua Cheng provides a Chinese perspective on global trade governance and the economic crisis, focusing on the upside of a downturn.
The most critical problem facing global trade governance at this moment is that we have focused too much on problems at the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is dangerous to disregard the fact that the WTO has functioned well as a stabilizer of basic global economic order amidst economic turmoil.
Guest blogger Yash Tandon sets out a forward-looking agenda for global trade governance and sustainable development from a Southern perspective.
The world’s multilateral negotiations on trade and on sustainable development over the last decade yield two important lessons for the multilateral system.
The first lesson concerns the interconnectedness of things: trade, security, employment, human rights, development, terrorism, migration, poverty, climate change are all interconnected. For the developing countries of the South, trade and climate change are a dual facet of their continuing sustainable development challenges.
Even though the global economic crisis is far from over and may unfold in hitherto unexpected ways, the interests of developing countries, especially as they relate to the multilateral trading system, have definitely been implicated in ways that ought to force a rethink of national priorities. The purpose of this note is to identify a number of matters where crisis-related considerations should alter national calculations.
Bold trade and financial initiatives will be required to control the damage that the current crisis imposes on developing countries and to assure their economic recovery. At the highest level, the G20 will need to consolidate its position as a forum where substantive coordinating efforts can take place. A positive, concrete, action agenda needs to replace the emphasis on declarations of principle and the reassertion of willingness to cooperate. In addition to these efforts to provide substance to the agenda, two political challenges must be faced. The first is how to consolidate in developed countries a view that the enhanced role of the G20 over that of the G8 should become a permanent feature of global economic governance rather than a stop gap maintained only during the crisis. The second, similarly daunting challenge, is one of ensuring that developing countries are convinced that their interests are adequately represented by the developing countries that are G20 members.
