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WTO
Agenda The
current agenda of the WTO includes not only traditional matters
inherited from the GATT, but also several new issues, including trade
and competition, trade and investment, and trade and the environment.
According to Joseph Francois
(Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam and CEPR), however, these new issues
should not be permitted to divert attention from the more traditional
issues already under negotiation. Speaking at a lunchtime briefing,
organized under the auspices of CEPR’s corporate membership programme
on 7 March 1998, Francois noted that the raising of the new issues at a
recent ministerial meeting in Singapore had attracted considerable media
attention. In his view, however, this constituted a critical challenge
to WTO members over how to strike a balance in the allocation of the
organization’s scarce negotiating resources. Francois
argued that a great deal of important work remained to be completed in
the traditional GATT/WTO areas for negotiation. These included further
industrial tariff liberalization (especially outside the OECD), related
aspects of agricultural trade liberalization (including a number of
scheduled negotiations), the information technologies agreement (ITA)
and an expanded Agreement on Government Procurement (AGP), along with
the expected benefits of full implementation of the Uruguay Round
agreements. Although many of the new areas were important, the potential
benefits of further progress in these market-access areas were also
substantial. For OECD members, significant benefits would follow from
further trade liberalization in the rapidly growing markets of Asia.
Even after the Uruguay Round, substantial tariff-induced trade
distortions still covered much of the world’s trade in industrial
products. Empirical analysis confirmed that further reductions in trade
protection would result in substantial economic welfare gains. Governments
had a limited supply of trade-negotiating capital; of necessity,
therefore, there was a trade-off between the resources devoted to the
two sets of issues. There was a real danger that the potential benefits
from further moves towards freer trade would be put at risk if the
negotiating agenda was changed too radically.
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