The multilateral trading system is in crisis: not only are the benefits of globalization in question but the inclusive system itself, as the backbone of international trade relations and with the WTO as its guardian, is in danger. Moreover the centrality of the WTO is under threat with partial deals being pursued through “variable geometry” channels Global leaders are re-examining their roles and strategies when it comes to trade. The crisis in multilateralism and growing uncertainty about the direction of future global trade relations heavily affects the Doha round. Before these recent developments, the Round already was in serious trouble due to the polar opposite views on how it should be concluded that are held by major developed and developing members. Poor developing countries, including LDCs, suffer as in most partial deals they do not have a seat at the table and no opportunity to voice their concerns. Their small size in terms of trade volume combined with a non-assertive approach in negotiations allows bigger players to proceed in their agenda-shaping discussions without them. Meanwhile, outside negotiating rooms, the development of new technologies is dramatically changing trade patterns worldwide. It has also enabled an unprecedented growth of e-commerce, which created previously non-existing opportunities for remote small-scale manufacturers. Poor developing countries including LDCs stand to gain from these developments only if they are well organized and work together in shaping the future multilateral rules to work for their development.
Against this backdrop the Session will examine negotiating avenues that could be pursued by poorer developing countries in the international arena to make sure that the global trading system is responsive to their development needs. The Session will discuss possible responses by those countries to various new developments such as regional integration, plurilateral and bilateral exclusive agreements as well as how they can act to minimize any negative effects of these developments on their economies. In addition, the Session will also invite panellist to brainstorm on the trade policy reform that is needed in the lesser developed countries to make sure that their own trade ecosystems are in tune with developments of the 21st Century and are aimed at integrating them into the mainstream of world trade .
A backlash against economic globalisation has swept through many economies in the two years since trade ministers met in Nairobi, Kenya. The losses and gains, real or perceived, from trade have been actively debated. Simultaneously, governments have universally endorsed the 2030 Agenda, a blueprint to achieve inclusion and sustainability at the national level and in the global economy. What can trade policy now do to boost confidence in a system that works for all? Where can trade policy help to deliver growth and jobs of the future amid a rapidly changing technology landscape?
The E15 Initiative (E15) opening plenary session aims to move beyond the debate on the merits and demerits of economic globalisation to focus on where trade policy, and particularly the WTO agenda, can deliver for sustainable development. This plenary session will assess the prospects for the future of the global economy and trade growth, in terms of major trade policy changes that can contribute to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda. This evaluation will take into account the role of major economies in safeguarding and improving trade governance to serve a more inclusive, balanced, and sustainable development course.
The plenary will set the stage for the targeted discussion to take place in the E15 track at the TSDS focused both on the Eleventh WTO Ministerial Conference (MC11), as well as the functioning of the WTO and potential deliverables in the long-term.
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E-commerce holds promise for delivering new business opportunities and inclusive trade. But it has not yet lifted all boats. This session will explore the extent to which the trade policy community can contribute to improving the enabling environment for cross-border e-commerce and, as a priority, ensuring this works for development and small business. Participants will discuss what specific issues — from electronic payments to logistics — would most benefit from trade policy interventions as well as where public-private collaboration can help.
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Services now constitute almost 50% of world value-added trade and are the heart of multilateral, mega-regional and regional trade negotiations, with services and services-related issues comprising well over half of the disciplines in modern trade agreements.
Even though all LDCs and developing countries export services, improving the efficiency and contribution of services to domestic economic transformation and sustainable growth faces a number of challenges. One of the most significant ones are inadequately designed and/or implemented regulatory frameworks. This hinders the potential for services to support inclusive development, especially the participation of SMEs and women in the economy. In addition, the external context for services trade has been rapidly evolving with renewed discussions in the WTO on domestic regulation, and the incorporation of new and modernized disciplines on domestic regulations in recently concluded trade agreements such as the CETA and Pacific Alliance, as well as future agreements such as the TiSA and TPP. Policy-makers and regulators need to repond to these challenges in order to craft domestic regulations that are effective, WTO-compatible, inclusive and take into account new developments.
This session objective is two-fold: 1) exploring the contribution of services to sustainable development, in particular to overall economic competitiveness and inclusion; 2) explore how domestic regulations can contribute to this objective, in particular, what could be done at domestic level, and multilaterally.
E-commerce has opened a gateway of new opportunities for micro, small, medium and micro enterprises (MSMEs), to access international markets, find new sources of demand and build value through exposure to new technologies. Supported by social media, digital promotion and e-commerce platforms, MSMEs can promote their products and services to professional buyers and consumers across the world, and build a name for themselves beyond their geographical borders.
Evidence reveals that, in relative terms, women entrepreneurs are significantly more active in e-commerce than in traditional trade. E-commerce therefore has a strong potential to contribute to closing the gender gap in international trade.
Developing countries are taking advantage of e-commerce and e-solutions. According to GSMA, an association of mobile operators, by 2020 there will be more than 700 million smartphone connections in Africa, which is twice the projected number in North America and around the total in Europe.
Beyond this optimistic picture there are challenges, especially for MSMEs in developing countries. Significant barriers exist for these MSMEs to establish an online presence internationally, and opportunities are most often limited to the domestic market. Moreover, firm-level data show that there is a significant connectivity gap for women-owned or managed firms.
There are still far too few e-commerce platforms that operate internationally out of developing countries. Furthermore, logistics costs are relatively higher in developing countries, hindering e-commerce transactions from this group. These challenges matter, because e-commerce offers great potential to deliver economic growth, jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities, both for the MSMEs directly active in the business and in a wide range of supporting services. Absence from international e-commerce is a missed opportunity. It is an important component of modern competitiveness.
Access to digital technologies underpins the ambitions behind many of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals – and e-commerce can be an important engine for inclusive economic growth, creating jobs for youth and empowering women. Being online levels the playing field when it comes to gender as the share of women-owned firms doubles when moving from traditional offline trade to cross-border e-commerce.
Findings from the ITC MSME E-Commerce Competitiveness Survey and ITC’s contribution to the Aid for Trade at a Glance 2017 on closing the small business and gender gap will be discussed during the session to illustrate the potential for a more inclusive e-commerce ecosystem for MSMEs and for women entrepreneurs in developing countries, and showcase how effective trade policy can help support this.
Keynote speech delivered by H.E. Mr Jorge Faurie, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship of Argentina, on “Argentina in the global economy, the WTO MC11 and the G20”.
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The impetus of multilateral trading system was formed to overcome the outbreak of protectionism in the 1930s and its severe scarring effects. With the expansion of membership over last six decades, it has transformed into the current system, represented by the World Trade Organization. The positive contribution of the WTO in trade liberalization has been well-acknowledged, especially in terms of setting out rule-based global trading system and leading the participation of heterogeneous economies at various development levels in it. According to the WTO, the volume of trade has increased two-and-a-half times since the launch of the WTO. Such explosive increase of global trade is believed to have created better opportunities for faster ecnomic growth, higher levels of job creation, and poverty reduction across countries.
Despite the success and achievements realized so far, the current multilateral trading system has confronted significant challenges. Sluggish progress and repeated delays of the Doha Round negotiations in consequence have failed to provide proper venues to explore new trading rules in a fast-evolving global economic environment. At the same time, the rise of protectionist sentiment and corresponding trade-restrictive actions across countries since the global financial crisis pose another challenge along with slow eeconomic recovery, stagnated trade growth and widening income inequality. In spite of numerous evidence of positive benefits from trade, escalating dissatisfaction towards trade liberalization puts the pursuit of trade liberalization and economic integration on the defensive as populist backlash against trade prevails even among the world’s leading economies.
Notwithstanding such widely-accepted consensus that we need to break the current political stalemate and move forward in pursuit of trade liberalization, the answer to how to elicit international cooperation for it under the current multilateral trading system does not seem so clear.
In this session, we first would like to assess the achievements and the challenges of the multilateral trading system, especially in the context of current economic environment. Then we will explore all the possible options for the changes of the current multilateral trading system and ways to enhance the international cooperation in trade liberalization.
The future of trade lies in services, and LDCs export many of them. But clearly, not nearly enough. LDCs must have a strong services industry. Without LDCs effectively participating in the world of value chains, servicification and automation, the integrity of the world trading system is in peril. The 2011 LDCs Services Waiver, as much as various FTA negotiations involving services, shifted focus on market access for services, particularly from LDCs. While many other issues including infrastructure, national regulation, financing, business know how and others obviously affect the ability of LDCs to export services, market access in target markets matters greatly.
LDC service providers, wherever they operate, tend to confirm that regulatory, tax, discriminatory treatment and classical market access issues operate as significant, sometimes formidable - and yet avoidable - obstacles to their bona fide trade. The 2011 LDC Services Waiver offers WTO Members the possibility to grant preferences to services imports from LDCs. Since 2013 a process of “operationalization” has been under way. As of 2015 twenty-four WTO Members, including all developed and several developing countries, have detailed their preferences for LDC services through notifications to the WTO. The effective value of the preferences for LDC services exports is under discussion.
UNCTAD has commissioned four pilot studies on what LDCs services and service providers need, whether waiver preferences address this need, and what more can and should be done. This session provides an opportunity for an early discussion in the broader context of market access for LDC services – under GATS; FTAs and unilateral preferences.
UNCTAD events on the margins of the Eleventh WTO Ministerial Conference
CIGI’s International Law Research Program (ILRP) is delighted to host this panel as a Knowledge Partner of the ICTSD’s Trade and Sustainable Development Symposium in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
We have entered a moment of profound challenge for open societies. Overall poverty levels worldwide are diminishing with deepened trade, notably but not exclusively in China. Yet inequality within and across states is at record levels. The benefits of trade do not appear to have been evenly distributed, such that many workers consider themselves to be trade’s losers forced to bear the individualized risk of economic restructuring, and women and Indigenous peoples wonder if they will ever experience firsthand the benefits of participating in international trade. The dawning awareness of the uneven distribution of the benefits of international trade stokes fear and cynicism about globalization and calls for more trade protectionism.
This panel calls attention to the perceived mismatch between existing provisions in trade agreements, and the concerns about the impact of trade on labour and employment, and the need to ensure that global trade is inclusive of women and indigenous peoples. This panel will review existing trade agreements. It will consider the potential to enhance participation of labour, women and Indigenous peoples, and reinforce progressive social values while promoting global economic growth. It is particularly concerned to canvass the important role that might be played by individual states in fostering an inclusive trade agenda and progressive trade adjustment measures. It seeks to push thinking further, to consider whether and how regional economic agreements might become sites through which to rethink distributive justice. It will bring together leading experts on the interface between human rights and labour law, trade law, and development to discuss how core social values of inclusion, equity and the right to decent work might better be embedded in regional and multilateral economic agreements.
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Sustainability standards and the increasing demand of consumers in both developed and developing countries for sustainably produced goods and services offer great potential for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). At the same time, they can have an adverse effect if producers and exporters from developing countries are able to meet these requirements.
As sustainability demands increase, producers and firms of all sizes and at all levels and locations along the supply chain need to adjust and monitor practices in order to meet consumer expectations and their own Corporate Social Responsibility principles. Through sustainability standards, producers in developing countries can access new and/or more remunerative markets, whilst investing in better social and environmental production conditions. When they are successful, standards can help create decent work and economic growth. However, compliance to standards and technical regulations is especially challenging for small and medium enterprises (SME) from developing countries.
As standards proliferate, the needs for harmonization, conformity assessment and transparency become more evident. Effective partnerships and cooperation mechanisms can importantly contribute to better aligning the sustainability and trade agendas. These include cooperation between the private and the public sector, among standards setting organizations and between international organization working on trade and sustainability issues.
The session seeks to bring together different perspective to these issues and discuss what forms effective cooperation should take to ensure that sustainability standards contribute to sustainable trade and support the SDGs.
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Sixteen of the seventeen warmest years on record have occurred since 2001, with 2016 being the hottest of them. Sea ice is melting and oceans are heating, leading to rising sea levels which threaten the very existence of many low-lying countries. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more intense.
In 2015, the world’s nations came together under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and agreed to limit average global temperature increases to well below 2˚C. Yet, country pledges currently don’t add up; a recent report by UNEP indicates that we are heading for a temperature increase of 3.2 ˚C by the end of the century.
Against this backdrop, it is crucial that every effort is made to scale up climate action. Trade has an important role to play in this regard. For example, as manufacturing of clean energy goods is currently concentrated in a handful of countries, trade is the means to allow all countries to access these technologies and transition to a cleaner energy mix. Moreover, international trade can make it possible to favour consumption of low carbon goods. Yet, trade barriers remain in the area and there is no coherent strategy for addressing them.
At the same time, cooperation on international trade rules is crucial so as not to undermine countries’ efforts as they implement their climate policies. For example, carbon pricing policies could, if unmatched, distort competitiveness, ultimately to the detriment of climate action. There is also a need to address climate policies in the transport sector, which have obvious trade links.
How to go about generating momentum for action on trade and climate change? Attempts to even host a discussion about climate change in the WTO don’t garner enough support to make it onto the agenda, and the UNFCCC is similarly reluctant to address trade issues.
The G20 is a promising avenue for taking up this work, at a time when collaboration, dialogue and experience sharing are much needed. The recent G20 Hamburg summit indeed showed that there is a need for alignment as well as ambition on both trade and on climate.
This event will present and discuss a White Paper currently being prepared by ICTSD, building on a year-long effort to conceive an agenda on trade and climate change for the G20, generously supported by the KR Foundation.
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GTPA: The New Global Standard in Expertise-Based Trusted Networks
This session will introduce the Global Trade Professionals Alliance, outline the mandate, organisation and aspirations of the GTPA, and link the GTPA trusted network to the professionalization of trade practice.
We will explore the GTPA as a powerful channel for the dissemination of best practices and contributions to economic inclusion and development through trade, as well as charting a path for GTPA as an important complement to the work of international organisations, trade promotion organisations, policy bodies and others working to enable trade around the globe.
The GTPA’s competency-based approach, rooted in a global ISO standard, adds a level of discipline to the development of expertise in all aspects of international trade, and in so doing, uniquely links areas like trade management, supply chain practices, legal, regulatory and compliance skills, together with trade-related financing and international development.
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Key note address by Hon Steven Ciobo MP, Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment- Australia.
Latin America has gone global. The rapid transition towards a digital economy, the densification of global value chains, and the ever-increasing trade flows, both among Latin American countries and between them and the rest of the world, bring opportunities but also demand improved and accelerated preparation from governments and business sectors alike.
Small and medium-sized enterprises require thoughtful governmental action to better integrate into the new economy. Access to modern infrastructure and effective financing have a significant impact on the development of new business with export potential. On a continent where 70 percent of the labour force, but only 30 percent of its GDP comes from small and medium-sized enterprises, sound regulatory frameworks play a key role in creating appropriate conditions that facilitate engagement in the global economy.
Latin America has a historic opportunity to take a leap forward. Her natural wealth, combined market size, and vocation for integration make her an attractive business partner, particularly for Southeast Asia and Europe, despite her traditional ties with North America.
This high-level plenary will allow top policymakers and business with a particular interest in Latin America to share their views, confront their opinions, and work on common approaches towards the participation of Latin America in the new global economy in a trajectory coherent with the vision embodied in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The discussions will surround the orientation of Latin America in the context of globalisation, whether as a mere spectator or assuming a role as a creative and progressive player.
With the entry into force of the WTO’s landmark Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), governments are set to accomplish the vital task of transforming the TFA provisions into concrete reforms to be implemented nationally.
Effective engagement and contribution of the private sector is crucial to ensuring the success of trade facilitation and maximizing its impact on economic development and poverty reduction. The Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation is at the centre of such efforts.
What lessons can we learn from practical experiences of public-private collaboration around trade facilitation? What are the ways forward?
Two years on from the Alliance’s launch at MC10 in Nairobi, please join us for a discussion on lessons learned from its initial portfolio of projects in countries including Colombia, Vietnam, Kenya, Ghana and Sri Lanka. Practical experiences will be also shared from other participants and ways forward for further leveraging the private sector will be discussed.
Note: This session will be in the form of an interactive workshop with breakout table discussions without interpretation.
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Services and service providers in the least-developed countries (LDC) face barriers in accessing developing and developed countries’ markets. These restrictions—mostly related to commercial presence and the movement of natural persons to provide services—notably come in the form of visa policies and non-recognition of qualifications. Movement of a person from an LDC to developed countries, which is one of the modes of services trade under the World Trade Organization (WTO), is the most restricted of all. To develop LDCs’ services sector, the 9th WTO Ministerial Conference granted a Services Waiver. In response to the collective waiver request submitted by the LDC Group on 21 July 2014, so far 23 developing and developed country members have offered concessions and preferences to the LDC members. The Waiver brings in challenges along with opportunities to the LDCs. There are ambiguities in the modality of implementation of the Waiver itself, and developed countries have not responded well to the LDC request.
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This book focuses on presenting some of the main themes that are pending in the WTO negotiations, with an emphasis on the views and perspectives of the Southern Cone countries. These countries’ interests and perspectives are influenced by the importance of agriculture in their economies and by the important role they play as the largest net food exporters.
The book is divided in three Parts. The first Part presents the main issues included in the three main Pillars of the Agreement on Agriculture which are still unresolved and that are of special interest for the Southern Cone countries. The second Part presents two themes that, although having been discussed, have not been seriously considered in the WTO deliberations to date – the elimination of export restrictions in food products and the incorporation of environmental disciplines in the WTO agenda. Finally, the third Part presents some conclusions, suggestions, and recommendations.
