Negotiating Trade Liberalization At The Wto

This book shows how domestic political institutions and the lack of time pressure have an impact on negotiations at the WTO. It provides detailed information on WTO ministerial meetings as well as on the political economy of trade policy in the EU, U.S., Brazil, and Australia.

This book examines the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the context of the global economy in the twenty-first century, arguing that many problems within the institution lie in the disparity between its design and the nature of its tasks. Studying the global trade regime and the unsuccessful Doha round of trade liberalization negotiations, this volume suggests that important institutional adjustments may be necessary for the WTO and other major international institutions to (re-)gain their ability to manage global economy. It uses extensive new qualitative and quantitative evidence to identify systematic dysfunctions in how the Doha negotiations have been conducted and links these dysfunctions to the exclusively inter-governmental design of interest representation in the WTO. Based on this, the book argues that global economic institutions should consider allowing broader parliamentary and non-state representation of their members. Presenting findings which can also be applied to other global economic institutions, Negotiations in the World Trade Organization will be useful to students and scholars of international trade, global governance and international political economy.

Looking at the negotiating strategies of India and several other WTO members over the years, this volume explores the negotiating scenario and the concerns for India and other developing countries. The introduction notes that judging by the experience of Cancun (2003) and the recent Hong Kong Ministerial (2005), developing countries are fast emerging as quick learners of the rules of the game, but need to sharpen those skills further: "It is quite prudent to understand that hidden from public glare, both the battle and the war will now continue in Geneva, which is less of a free trade bastion than Hong Kong. It is by now a time-honoured fact that the intensity of liberalisation undertaken at home makes handling the WTO-induced reforms easier, and the priorities for Indian policy makers are therefore, obvious. Notwithstanding the WTO objective, even eleven years after the inception of the multilateral body, the trade barriers, both in developed and developing countries are quite significant and unilateral liberalisation is not easily forthcoming. Although this lack of market access hurt the developing countries much more severely than their developed counterparts, the former group never systematically bargained at the negotiating table with the latter before the Doha Ministerial (2001). Looking at the negotiating strategies of India and several other WTO members over the years, the nine papers in this volume explore the current negotiating scenario and the concerns for India and other developing countries. While some papers attempt to chalk out the future of global free trade and the determinants of protectionism of major players, the other ones look into the future of India's sectoral negotiating strategy.

Negotiations between governments shape the world political economy and in turn the lives of people everywhere. Developing countries have become far more influential in talks in the World Trade Organization, including infamous stalemates in Seattle in 1999 and Cancún in 2003, as well as bilateral and regional talks like those that created NAFTA. Yet social science does not understand well enough the process of negotiation, and least of all the roles of developing countries, in these situations. This 2006 book sheds light on three aspects of this otherwise opaque process: the strategies developing countries use; coalition formation; and how they learn and influence other participants' beliefs. This book will be valuable for many readers interested in negotiation, international political economy, trade, development, global governance, or international law. Developing country negotiators and those who train them will find practical insights on how to avoid pitfalls and negotiate better.

Draws on both theory and evaluations of several major Preferential trading arrangements (PTAs) to discuss the constraints to achieving liberalisation in PTAs and key problems facing negotiators trying to achieve the best outcomes within given political economy constraints, such as choice of rules of origin and dispute settlement procedures.

In spite of many years of negotiation on trade liberalization, progress seems to have stalled. This book explores why resistance to further market liberalization seems so strong, given that the benefits are seen to outweigh the costs. This volume argues that in order to understand the slow progress of World Trade Organization negotiations, we need to take into consideration the ‘intermestic’ character of trade politics, that is, the way in which international and domestic aspects of politics and policies have been woven together and become inextricably related to each other. This is a general trend in our globalizing world, and one that is most pronounced in the case of trade politics and policy. International Trade Negotiations and Domestic Politics therefore presents an in-depth analysis of institutions, ideas, interests and actors in the interplay between international trade negotiations and national negotiating positions. At the international level the authors focus on the multilateral negotiations within the World Trade Organization, together with the plurilateral and bilateral negotiations on free trade agreements. At the regional and domestic level they analyze the trade politics and policies of two established powers, the European Union and the USA; two rising powers, China and India; and a small industrialized country with an open economy, Norway.

The publication contains an explanation of Most Favored Nation (MFN) treatment and some of the key issues that arise in its negotiation, particularly the scope and application of MFN treatment to the liberalization and protection of foreign investors in recent treaty practice. The paper provides policy options as regards the traditional application of MFN treatment and identifies reactions by States to the unexpected broad use of MFN treatment, and provides several drafting options, such as specifying or narrowing down the scope of application of MFN treatment to certain types of activities, clarifying the nature of "treatment" under the IIA, clarifying the comparison that an arbitral tribunal needs to undertake as well as a qualification of the comparison "in like circumstances" or excluding its use in investor-State cases.

This book gauges possible development implications of current WTO trade negotiations by examining various proposals and assessing their likely economic impact. The experiences of a number of countries at different levels of development and across various regions are examined to ascertain the impact of their trade reforms.