UCT GSB hold roundtable on WTO Warwick Commission's report

Attended by numerous academics, business and public sector leaders as well as representatives of policy think-tanks and non-governmental organisations, the discussion was led by Dr Patrick Low, chief economist of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and one of the commissioners, and Professor Richard Higgott, the commission's chief architect and Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick.

An initiative of the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom - with additional sponsorship provided by the EU Framework 6 Network of Excellence on Global Governance and Regionalisation (GARNET) and the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI-Canada) - the commission was set up to examine the governance of the world trading system and to make recommendations on how it can be improved. It comprised of an international panel of mainly international trade experts.

The Warwick Commission's report has been discussed widely in various national capitals - including Geneva, Washington, New Delhi, Canberra, Buenos Aires, Brussels, Berlin and London. There has been a generally positive reaction to its recommendations from trade ministers, government officials, academics, business organisations and broader civil society formations.

From the response to the report, there is also a strong interest in South Africa and the broader southern African region in engaging with trade policy issues. The issues raised in the report will most certainly dominate trade policy discussions in the coming months and years.

The Commission's report examines how the multilateral trade regime can better serve the global community.

Five challenges must be met, says the report, if the multilateral trade regime is to succeed in the early 21st century. These challenges are distinct yet often related - taken together, they arise from several sources: national political dynamics, global economic developments and inter-state diplomacy.

The first challenge is to counter growing opposition to further multilateral trade liberalisation in industrialised countries. This tendency threatens to undermine further reciprocal opening of markets, thereby weakening a valuable instrument of international economic co-operation.

That the bipolar global trade regime dominated primarily by the United States and Western Europe has given way to a multipolar alternative is now an established fact. The second challenge is to ensure that this evolving configuration does not lapse into longer-term stalemate or worse, disengagement by both established and emerging powers in the global trade system.

In this changing environment, the third challenge is to forge a broad-based agreement among the membership about the institution's objectives and functions, which in turn will effectively define the “boundaries” of the WTO.

The fourth challenge is to ensure that the WTO's many agreements and procedures result in benefits for its weakest members. This requires that WTO members reconcile current trade rules with issues of fairness, justice and development.

The fifth challenge relates to the proliferation of preferential trading agreements and the steps that need be taken to ensure that the considerable momentum behind these initiatives is eventually channelled to advance the long-standing principles of non-discrimination and transparency in international commerce.

The report calls for, among other things, an end to the reliance on consensus decision-making in future negotiations; a bigger role for the WTO in the delivery of Aid for Trade to developing countries; escalating financial compensation as a means to resolve some trade disputes, and an end to preferential trade agreements among the key industrialised countries.

Furthermore, the report calls on stakeholders in the trading system to permit themselves the time and space to take a step back from negotiating, litigating and running the daily business of trade policy in order to reflect on how they would like to see the trade regime evolve over the next few years. An inter-governmental "reflection exercise" of this nature would seek to identify diverse needs and common interests, and to inject greater legitimacy, order and dynamism into the multilateral trade regime.

These recommendations represent a comprehensive and systematic effort to respond to current global trade challenges.

The Warwick Commission's report can be downloaded here.