At the special video conference participated by the 164 members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) (WTO), WTO Director Director Roberto Middot; Azawado announced that he would officially leave on August 31.The term of the year.
For Azerovo, who has been working in the WTO for 23 years, it has too much helplessness to abandon the heavy position early, because in the face of an increasingly functional WTO, Azawado can not find any occupation.The sense of accomplishment is more difficult to surrender the transcript that is satisfactory to the members of the member states. Without the anxiety drive of too difficult to work, you can only choose to pick up the pick.
From the 111 member states at the beginning of its establishment, to the current addition of 164 economies, the WTO has not only effectively realized the expansion of the body in 25 years, but also precipitated the formulation of international multilateral trade rules, organizing multilateral trade negotiations, and solving solutions.Three core functions of trade disputes between members.
In terms of trade rules, the trade facilitation agreement reached by the member states has cut 14%of global trade costs; in terms of trade negotiations, the successful consultation of information technology products alone has increased the export volume of relevant products to three times more by three times more than three times more than three times more than three times.In terms of dispute resolution, the WTO has successfully resolved more than 580 risk of trade disputes.According to the latest report from the British Guardian, in the past year, WTO has brought $ 855 billion in income for member states, and the average GDP of each member country has increased by 4.5%.
However, while releasing the energy guidance, negotiation induction, and mediation enlightenment to the outside world, the WTO also strongly feels that the bonds encountered by the three core functions are increasing.Compared with organizational achievements, the degree of failure of WTO's vocal volume on major international trade issues is more severe, and even the crisis of marginalization and abolition is approaching step by step.
In addition to the blankness and lack of relevant rules such as e -commerce, digital trade, and intellectual property rights, it reflects the severe lag of the WTO innovation steps, and the abortion of the Duoha Round negotiations and the suspension of the dispute resolution agency (DSB) are paralyzed.Instant expression of inhibitory and tearing pain.
It covers 20 core contents such as agricultural, non -agricultural market access, service, and intellectual property rights, and carries Dhaha round negotiations that reduce trade barriers and create a fair trade environment. It was initially determined to complete the consultation goals within five years.However, from the head of the member states to the first day of the negotiating table, while competing each other to grab their respective views and claims, they have never stopped the debate around the content and policy terms.In the end, after several rounds, except for the small results of the 108,000 miles of negotiation targets at the Ninth Ministerial Meeting of the WTO at the Ninth Ministerial Meeting of the WTO, the progress of all areas and projects in all areas and projects remains.level.
Seeing that the negotiations could not be carried out, the next ministerial meeting was either in the multilateral negotiations either the preface to the service or the transfer to other topics that were not related to the set content.Just a official statement.
DSB, which is regarded as the WTO Crown Pearl, is the Global Supreme Court in terms of role positioning. According to regulations, seven regular DSB judges are required to deal with at least three judges in each case.However, since two years ago, six judges have left their posts due to the expiry of the term of office or full year.According to the procedure, it should be selected and supplemented in a timely manner. However, due to the DSB's existence of overlap ruling and trial overdue, the United States has repeatedly used one vote to veto the right to interfere with the new judge selection procedure, resulting in DSB only one judge left at the end of last year.
Many incremental trade disputes and new complaint cases cannot be tried compliant with DSB, and the WTO arbitration agencies have been completely stopped since its establishment.The more serious consequences are to appeal the initial judgment results, but in the end, they were not obtained by the final judgment. The defeat party was fully sufficient to veto the report of the expert group.
In particular, the three core functions of the WTO are actually closely linked, especially the latter two constitute a powerful guarantee for the first function;It takes for granted to paint, or if there is friction and disputes, it will not get a fair judgment, and in the end it will be willful. Even if the WTO can develop a very strict and comprehensive trade rules, it is just a piece of paper and cannot be implemented at all;At the same time, the macro sense represents WTO loses its legal execution and effectiveness.From this perspective, the current function of the WTO is no longer local atrophy, but a full -scale collapse, and it is not an exaggeration to describe it with names.
Looking back, the end of the Duoha Round negotiations may end, maybe it is only a resting symbol on the cross section, but the sequelae caused by this is continuously fermented.Agreement (FTA).
According to statistics from the WTO, in the regional trade agreement (RTA) that has taken effect, the proportion of bilateral FTAs in RTA in the past 10 years has reached 90%.Although the bilateral FTA multi -side trade agreement is more flexible and simple and convenient to operate, it directly leads to the fragmentation of world trade and splits the division of labor and cooperation of the global value chain.More importantly, after the country placed in the bilateral FTA has obtained the dividend of trade cooperation, it may be more diluted or abandoned the obligations of the WTO member states. The multilateral trade process advocated by the WTO has become more difficult.
While the organizational coagulation encountered bilateral FTA diversion, the WTO was impacted by trade protectionism and unilateralism.According to global trade warning data, in addition to the United States that has thrown more than 1,500 trade protection measures in the past 10 years, another 19 countries in the G20 have also introduced more than 8,000 protectionist policies, of which in 2019 alone, only globally globally in 2019.It has added 1,291 new trade barriers.With the impact of the crown disease epidemic on the economy of various countries, various forms of trade protection methods may appear densely.
Affected by this, in the past 10 years, the global trade growth rate was based on the average annual growth rate of only 20 years in the first 20 years of the financial crisis.WTO predicts that international trade will decline by as much as 30%this year.
Obviously, whether it is a bilateral FTA that spreads around the world, or unilateralism that emerge from all corners of the world, or a variety of protectionist policies that have been changed, it has become a new challenge that WTOs must face.In addition, the displacement of the focus of global economic development, the reconstruction of the power of the trading subject, the upgrade of the trade form, and the replacement and improvement of the trade method, etc., all need to make corresponding changes and breakthroughs in the era of the era; accelerated change has become a projection of all member states.Basic consensus to WTO.
In this regard, China, the United States, the European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia have all put forward their own proposals in different ways, and collective wisdom undoubtedly paved the basic way for WTO reform.
The analysis found that although there are no small differences on the reform of the WTO reform, except for the United States, almost all WT0 member states are adhering to the multilateral trading system, maintenance and strengthening the dispute resolution mechanism, enhanced the transparency of daily work, and promoting the upgrading of trade rules.The claims are basically consistent.With such common demands, other specific rules such as the identification of the identity of developing countries, the scope and degree and extent of the best benefit of the country's treatment, fair competition standards, industrial policies and subsidies, and dispute solutions are not difficult to solve through negotiation consultations, and alsoIt is easy to obtain the maximum number of constraints accepted.
It has to be emphasized that no matter how stubbornly and tough the United States has performed on bilateral free trade models, WTO reforms cannot have any stance on multilateral free trade.Because only by defending multilateral free trade can we ensure that weak countries in the WTO can obtain the opportunity to stand together, get relatively full right to speak in the game with the great powers, and then realize their own interests.And in orderThe competitiveness of individual economies is in the global pattern of imbalanced state. Protecting backward and developing countries is the basic concept of WTO, and it is also the economic moral bottom line that the economic power should adhere to.
For the WTO, it shakes the foundation of multilateral trade, about non -discrimination principles, promoting fair competition principles, and principles of the most beneficiary of the country will become a moral preaching without any substantial significance.It is completely dominated and dominated by the law of the jungle.
Therefore, an extreme phenomenon that may occur around the WTO change is that the United States may put pressure on reform with the behavior of exiting the WTO, but this situation will not last for a long time.For the United States, hovering outside the WTO, although it can develop trade conditions for other countries more, it also means that other countries can treat the United States like this.Without the WTO, the United States may have to invest more in trade disputes between countries in bilateral trade.In view of this, as in the 1980s, the United States had to return to the multilateral trading system due to the situation of a large number of unilateral measures or bilateral conflicts.
(The author is a director of the Chinese Society of the Chinese Market, a professor of economics, and graduate instructor of the University of Foreign Studies of Guangdong Foreign Studies)
