First, we must continue to work on outstanding Doha issues, particularly those issues that can only be solved by the WTO and not in bilateral or regional agreements. One such issue is subsidies. We cannot approach them in the same way that we have in the past; we need to look at them with fresh eyes and seek new avenues for compromise. But neither should we just close up shop and walk away.
Second, we must begin to discuss, and eventually to negotiate, issues that have not been addressed under the DDA but are critical for the world economy today. Helping trade and investment flow in 2016 is a different task to what it was in 2001. That is evident from the kinds of barriers many WTO members are addressing in their free trade agreements. Of the over 200 bilateral and regional agreements notified to the WTO secretariat since 2000, 59 percent contain commitments on competition — an area where there is no multilateral agreement at all. They also go far beyond WTO commitments on areas such as investment, services and intellectual property protection.
To remain relevant, the WTO needs to look at broadening its agenda to address some of these questions. Such issues could include e-commerce and digital trade, investment, regulatory issues affecting goods and services behind the border or enhanced disciplines on subsidies and on murky forms of local content obligations, to name just a few.
Third, we need to work differently. The WTO has made important progress in recent years — on trade facilitation in Bali, and, in Nairobi, on information technology equipment and subsidies to agricultural exports. We are also making good progress on environmental goods and, outside the WTO, in the Trade in Services Agreement negotiations. But this progress has been achieved by tackling problems individually or in small packages, not through a grand bargain in which nothing is agreed until everything is agreed by everyone. That suggests that we should favor more focused negotiations and tackle specific issues on their own merit.
I had the following thoughts in reaction:
-- I think the old approach to cutting subsidies, whereby governments resisted cutting them, should be replaced by a new approach, in which governments offer proposals for cutting them.
-- Adding competition and investment to the WTO agenda would probably face great resistance.
-- Competition and investment are very different issues. In FTAs, competition chapters do not do very much; investment chapters, by contrast, may be the most important aspect of these agreements.
-- IP protection does go further in FTAs than at the WTO, but not everyone agrees that this is, on balance, a good thing.
-- The WTO services commitments may not go as far as some FTA services commitments, but the WTO commitments are on an MFN basis, which is a big plus.
-- Regulatory issues for behind the border measures are a huge part of WTO obligations already. (That's what most of the fun disputes are about!) It is not clear to me how these rules can be expanded. Similarly, local content requirements are mostly prohibited already.
-- Focusing on specific sectors may be the most practical way forward.
-- What happened to trade remedies? Let's put that back on the agenda!
