Managerial Ecconomics

Trade Policy Research 2004
Table of Contents
The World Trade System:
Challenges and Opportunities from the
Development Perspective
Paul Mably with Susan Joekes and Khaled Fourati* This Chapter reports on a seminar hosted by the Trade, Employment and Competitiveness Program Initiative of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC, 11 December 2003 in Ottawa, Canada). Fourteen presenters addressed five topic areas: the practicalities of multilateralism, governance and negotiations, old and new actors in the trade policy process, conditionalities of market access, and insecurity of negotiated market access (see http://web.idrc.ca/en/ev-51329-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html for the full program and submitted articles). The 79 participants included representatives of United Nations bodies; the World Trade Organization; the Parliament of Canada; Canadian government ministries and agencies; IDRC staff, research partners and networks; universities; NGOs; the private sector; and other experts on international trade policy and development. While names of presenters are referred to in this report, views expressed in discussions are not attributed to individual participants.
The Context
In December 2003, the failure a few months earlier of trade talks at the World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Meeting in Cancún, Mexico, was still reverberating in international policy circles.
At Cancún, developing countries had shown that they could stand their ground if they stood together. Developed countries, while making concessions on some issues of importance to developing countries, proved unable to offer enough flexibility in two key areas, agriculture and the Singapore issues1, to woo developing countries back to the negotiating table. Three months after Cancún, no significant advances had been made in restarting WTO negotiations; the US had channelled its energies into bilateral negotiations, the EU its into its expansion. Questions were being raised whether the global...