Trade and Poverty

The World Bank Trade group has published a new collection of papers entitled Poverty and the WTO.  This work may be responsive to some of the questions raised in the debate between RSquared and Aaron Cosby below.  I would suggest that, at least in a sense, both are right.  The WTO constitutive documents, as Aaron Cosby points out, call for the WTO to respond to poverty.  On the other hand, the current form of negotiations may not be terribly responsive to poverty.  See the work by GDAE on this topic.  There is no particular legal barrier to expanding the scope of negotiations, but there are substantial political barriers.