Why Govern? by Acharya Amitav

Author:Acharya, Amitav
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2016-08-03T00:00:00+00:00

Concluding Thoughts

The trade regime is increasingly complex and a persistent sense of inequality means that the relatively simple and straightforward early days of the GATT are long past us. Recent developments also highlight that mainstream analysis that depicts multilateral, regional, and bilateral trade agreements as contract stories of rational actors arriving at mutually beneficial “win-win” solutions obscures important aspects of contemporary trade relations. When former USTR Robert Portman famously announced in the wake of the disastrous Cancun negotiations in 2003 the distinction between the “Can Do” and the “Won’t Do”32 countries, he betrayed both ignorance of and insensitivity to the plight of the poor “Won’t Do” nations. Perhaps more accurately they are “Can’t Do” nations – or maybe even “Shouldn’t Do” nations that make up the majority of WTO members. “Can’t Do” nations may lack capacity to implement agreements, or may be politically constrained from doing so. Thinking of “Shouldn’t Do” nations alerts us to the very real distributive consequences of trade deals and the fact that, while there are winners, there are many losers as well. Even if aggregate welfare increases with the successful completion of a trade round, the highly skewed distribution of that welfare is a fundamentally political issue that goes a long way toward accounting for increasing multilateral stalemates and protracted and contentious negotiations.

WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo offered a candid assessment of the stakes of letting the multilateral process fail:

If we limit or paralyze conversations within the WTO (keeping the activities of the organization limited to monitoring and dispute settlement), it will not mean that conversations on other trade issues don’t take place. It just means that they happen somewhere else – and in formats where developing voices most likely will not be heard.33

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