By: WTO volunteers

Session 8: Trade rules don’t affect gender, but national decisions do, panellists say

SESSION TITLE: Doing it differently: Reshaping the global economy

Multilateral trade rules do not by themselves lead to gender inequities nor to gender-neutral outcomes, a women-only panel agreed in an opening session on the second day of the WTO Public Forum.

But, they said, the real impact of trade and trade policies on women comes through decisions taken at the national level on investment, resource allocation, legal enabling environments and policies.

They were speaking in a session exploring factors that influence women’s role in the domestic and international economies. They sought to identify steps that could contribute to enhancing women’s access to economic opportunities. The four women speakers represented diverse viewpoints: the human rights perspective, the private and public sectors, and the WTO Secretariat.

Panellists began by commenting on the factors that constrain the ability of women to participate fully as economic agents in the trading system. Women’s work is often concentrated in the informal sector where they may be exposed to low wages, long hours and uncertain tenure.

Lack of access to resources constrains the ability of women to enter the market economy, they said. Inadequate safety nets and support for child care limits women’s flexibility in terms of time allocation among economic activities, including housework. Without adequate education and training women are less competitive in growing sectors of the economy. Management practices that fail to recognize the diverse needs of men and women may lead to women being marginalized in the workplace.

Speakers proposed solutions to these issues in many forms: approaches varying, depending on domestic conditions. A change at the national level in terms of policies and resource allocation will have the highest potential for making an impact. Rules and regulations targeted at changing outcomes for women can be useful and data collection should be improved to support enhanced evaluation.

From the private sector perspective, management systems that encourage diverse teams lead to better outcomes, the session heard. In addition there was a consensus that there was scope for multilateral efforts to play a role, particularly in raising awareness.

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Session 9: Experts say crisis heightens need to tackle inequality, jobs — globally

SESSION TITLE: Coherence and the crisis: Decent work, the WTO and better world governance

The financial crisis means income inequalities must be addressed and policymakers must formulate coherent global responses to the crisis’s effect on employment, the Public Forum session on work, the WTO and governance heard.

Speakers combined theoretical and practical considerations to discuss how the current crisis has affected labour conditions around the globe. They agreed that deeper and more comprehensive coordination is needed to address inequalities that are not covered by present domestic and international rules.

In this session five experts discussed the friction and overlapping of issues trade and labour rights. They spoke from the perspectives of WTO law, Oxfam’s practice in effecting change in domestic policy-making, ILO’s institutional focus and ITUC’s coherency efforts.

Moderator Esther Busser from the (International Trade Union Confederation) ITUC started the session by asking focusing on its subjects. She insisted that there is a need to consider employment concerns, human rights, development and trade together in the process of policy-making, instead of separately analyzing the consequences of different rules after they have been set.

Ms. Busser asked the panellists if there was space for dialogue between the International Labour Organization (ILO) and WTO in the context of their collaborations from recent years, and if promoting decent work creates or impedes fairer trade and better distributive justice.

ITUC’s James Howard focused on the policies that are needed for sustainable recovery in the framework of WTO and global policy coherence. He cited statistics showing that world unemployment is now the highest in official history, threatening the promotion of decent work promotion as stimulus packages are phased out. He also emphasized that even pre-crisis employment realities were quite grim in developing countries.

Mr. Howard criticized the G20’s failure to follow through after acknowledging that it was their own lack of oversight that led to the current crisis. World leaders should not be complacent and believe that the crisis is over, he said.

Sustainable recovery, he said, requires: investment in carbon neutral economy; increased social spending; increased spending on training; implementation of the commitment to reform the financial sector on a global level; implementation of financial transaction tax; and coherence. Mr. Howard stressed the need to review the hierarchy of hard law and soft law, where WTO’s rules dilute the implementation of social and labour standards, and urged mainstreaming of development based on decent work agenda into the work of the WTO.

ILO’s Robert Kyloh said promoting decent work can bring fairer trade. Mr Kyloh enumerated three of the underlying sources of labour inequalities of today —technological change biased towards skilled jobs; trade liberalization and globalization; and the erosion of institutions.

Mr. Kyloh stressed the need to compensate the losers from globalization by creating and promoting institutions that deal with widening income gaps — collective bargaining, minimum wages and trade union rights.

The WTO’s Gabrielle Marceau focused on what the WTO rules say and what they are silent about and offered some practical suggestions for integrating labour into the WTO framework. She stressed that the WTO’s main goal is to avoid protectionism by governments. However, in contrast with the old GATT, trade liberalization now has to be done in the context of sustainable development, which includes environmental and economic, but also social components.

Ms. Marceau said the shift has had a fundamental impact on WTO case law, where, unlike environmental protection, there are no provisions on the rights of countries to restrict trade for reasons of social protection. She stressed that, from a strictly legal perspective, there is space for governments to provide or use social or labour considerations as conditions for providing market access, so long as certain criteria are met.

Ms. Marceau said distributive justice is a central issue for trade and growth, but pointed out that any action is up to the member governments and has to start at the domestic level. The preamble of the WTO Agreement states that the purpose of trade is to improve the situation of human beings, she recalled.

Oxfam’s Stephen Hale agreed fully with Mr. Kyloh and less so with Mr. Howard. Building on the panel’s shared view that trade and labour are linked and about the response to the crisis, he described Oxfam’s experience in putting the principles into practice. He blamed lack of regulation and responsibility of the North for the current crisis. Oxfam’s role is to underline the impact on people in the South caused by cuts in aid budgets and the fiscal crisis itself.

He called for a people-centred approach and a global governance system that recognizes the connection between trade, human rights and employment. He criticised the lack of adequate commitment by political leaders to consider those links and to deal with the systemic causes of the crisis.

Questions from the floor prompted a discussion on how political and legal means could and should be mobilized to address labour inequalities and the different perspectives on the impact of globalization. Mr Hale said that in addition to vested interests, institutional inertia is behind the lack of policy reform. Summing up, Ms Busser added states’ political commitment to the list of issues.

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Session 10: Panellists defend protection for weak African economies

SESSION TITLE: Africa’s benefits and challenges to regional and international trade

This session’s theme was the possibilities Africa has to improve its trade performance in more integrated economic environment. Although multilateral and regional agreements are important for the export sector growth, some particular conditions for weaker economies to protect themselves have to be allowed, speakers said.

Mr Rustonjee said the most cited causes for Africa’s poor trade performance in the last decades were: low market access, scant differentiation and lack of value added creation in production.

Mr Maroping stressed that the real challenge for the continent is to weaken the constraints to the supply side by promoting the UNIDO triple C approach. complementarity, coordination and coherence. Intra-African trade, according to the ambassador, should raise in the future otherwise investments in the continent would continue to be mainly related to extraction.

Accordingly, Mr Rudaheranwa claimed that concrete trade improvements could not be reached without substantial economic growth. Thus, long lasting investments, differently from resource seeking ones, could only be enhanced by improvements in physical infrastructures.

The discussion on the role of regional agreements and protection became more heated and was followed by floor contributions. It emerged from several interventions that some forms of protection are still needed for industrial development.

Ms Kwa said economic partnership agreements are a possible threat to the growing intra-African trade. The speaker added that the international community should be more concerned about EU agricultural subsidies’ impact on African least developed countrie’ competitiveness.

The whole session heard repeated comments that imports are a large share of African trade, which discourages domestic production. Speakers agreed on the priority need for domestic integration that should be achieved through a targeted support for smallholders in the creation of stronger business clusters.

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Session 11: ‘Non-state actors’ prefer the regional stage, session hears.

SESSION TITLE: Governments, non state actors and trade policy making: Negotiating preferentially or multilaterally?

This session’s discussion was spurred by a study of what drives non-state actors in their choice of forum, which in turn influences governments’ choice of negotiating preferentially or multilaterally. The conclusions showed that overall non-state actors (NSA) prefer to interact at the regional level rather than trying to influence the WTO process.

The panellists illustrated the data on NSAs’ forum choice collected in Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, South Africa and Thailand. The results of this study showed some striking similarities. Amongst the main findings, it was noted that for some of these countries the forum choice is often not an issue. However, when the issue is raised their preference to influence the result of regional and/or preferential trade agreements. This preference can be explained by the perception that the WTO is too remote, too big and hence its processes cannot be easily influenced by local NSAs. Although most civil society organizations (CSOs) recognize that the benefits from preferential trade agreements (PTAs) might be less rewarding than those of the multilateral process, they still prefer to focus their resources on lobbying the outcomes of preferential and regional trade arrangements whose scope is narrower and whose process is closer to home. The preference for PTAs over WTO agreements is often merely out of pragmatism rather that principle.

A further analysis of the forum choice of Geneva-based NSAs demonstrated that although these actors recognize the importance of multilateralism in creating a rules-based system, protecting the interests of developing countries and the possibility of influencing a higher number of players in Geneva, this preference is often not reflected in the positions of their affiliates elsewhere.

The lessons for the WTO is that it needs to encourage a debate about its core functions besides its role as a forum for negotiations. It also needs to carry the point across that the multilateral rule-making process is able to generate public goods.

The open debate was very much driven by CSO representatives who pointed out that the results of the study might be influenced by the freeze in the Doha negotiations. This might have shifted civil society’s attention from the multilateral process to the more dynamic PTA environment. Another issue raised was the importance of lobbying regional groups in the WTO. The panellists responded that these groupings often have limited role in pushing issues on the WTO agenda, due to their poor coordination and the different trade strategies of their members. The most effective groups are the common-interest groups, but the scope of their action is limited to few issues.

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Session 12: Food security requires more than a Doha agriculture deal, panellists say

SESSION TITLE: Policy coherence between trade, global food security and poverty reduction goals

This session’s objective was to shed some light on the use of trade distorting measures in agriculture and their effects on commodity prices, food stocks and thus food security for many developing countries. It was suggested that if the WTO does include some provisions to restrict the use of protectionist measures by developed countries, such as those contained in the Agriculture Agreement, more should be done ensure food security for all. Greater policy coherence at the domestic and amongst institutions at the international level should also be addressed .

Josef Schmidhuber raised the question of the compatibility of WTO’s framework with the transition from “The Old Normal” to the “New Normal”. That is, from a situation of mass support to the agriculture sector, creating surplus, market volatility and low prices (background of the launch of the Doha Round) to a high price environment for commodities with permanent shortages and food insecurity. Most of the poor are net food buyers in value terms, there is thus a parallel increase in under nutrition with the increase in commodity prices. Export restrictions and import subsidies are responsible for increasing prices which in turn has a direct impact on food security as commodities become unaffordable for many people living in developing countries. Higher commodity prices also harm those who should benefit from them due to the lack of adequate infrastructure to share these benefits and boost production. If the WTO has provisions to regulate export regulations, as contained in Article 23 of the Agricutlure Agreement, these disciplines have only had little impact. Josef Schmidhuber concluded his presentation by stating that poor farmers could benefit from free trade if the aid and investment policy space is filled by the DDA and if the asymmetries in trade disciplines are reduced.

François Riegert described food security as availability, access, utility and stability. He suggested that food insecurity could be reduced through the support for agriculture in the developing countries; the support for research in the developing countries; a responsible and sustainable management of the tenure system; a reduction in the volatility of agriculture markets and commodities. On the articulation between food security and the WTO, François Riegert suggested that though the FAO and the WTO may not share common views on the benefits (or not) of food security, one cannot conclude that there is incompatibility. WTO’s Articles XXh, Article 38 and the Agricutlure Agreement are examples of WTO’s efforts to stabilized price volatility in commodities. François Riegert concluded by calling for more coherence between global governance institutions and suggested that a “Agriculture Stability Forum” be established.

Flavio S. Damico began his presentation by stating that policy coherence begins at home before it can be tackled at the international level. Concerning the relations between trade rules and food security, he suggested that the Agriculture Agreement allowed ample policy space for developing countries which are exempt from existing disciplines. He warned about the adverse effects of trade distorting policies (e.g. export restrictions) in agriculture which affect developing countries in addition to harming the country using such measures.

Enrique Dominguez Lucero began his presentation by stating that Mexico has been adversely affected by some counties continued use of duties and subsidies. Since the launch of the DDA, Mexico encountered some difficulties with blocs of countries which use protectionist measures. Mexico’s federal government has thus shifted its focus to concentrate on how to address agriculture issues. Commitments made under the WTO are paralyzed by the DDA, through the inclusion of new issues such as quality standards or country of origin labelling. It is urgent that negotiations are pursued so as to increase security in the agricultural sector.

Ravi Bangar stated that India’s economy is growing at an 8.5% growth rate and hopes to reach 9% next year. Nevertheless, growth in the agriculture sector is the lowest. India is facing a high inflation rate, insufficient food stocks and infrastructure deficits. India needs to have an inclusive growth in addition to cereal self-sufficiency.

Discussion: Issues such as land scarcity, agricultural taxation in developing counties, G20’s new priorities, food industry monopolies, micro credits and the effects of GMOs were brought up in the discussion with the floor. It was stated that it is still necessary to focus on how to stabilized food security for farmers and the society as a whole. More research is necessary in the technology and biotechnology fields and greater efforts should be directed towards reducing the infrastructure deficit of some countries.

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Session 13: Session peers through fog of WTO’s relation to environment agencies

SESSION TITLE: Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs) and the WTO

The session looked at the question of the interaction between rules of the environmental regime and rules of the trade regime and how those two systems accommodate each other.

The panel shared Petros Mavroidis’ view that there is undoubtedly a lack of clarity from both the legislative and the judicial level of the impact of the WTO on multilateral environment agencies (MEAs). On the legislative side, there is still no specific regime on the issue though the WTO’s Trade and Environment Committee has been discussing it since 1996, with a fairly positive attitude but no concrete results. On the judicial side however, MEAs have been discussed a occasionally (for example in disputes involving US measures on shrimps and the EU’s measures on trade in viotech products), showing that WTO dispute rulings adopt an open attitude towards MEAs.

The panel raised the question of the compliance of environmental policies with article III (and eventually article XX) of the GATT, and also the question of whether MEAs impose obligations on non-parties. It is rather difficult to make an argument in light of the negative character of the GATT, but it will be interesting to observe whether MEAs practice may influence the interpretation of key terms in the WTO contract.

The role of MEAs in the trading system was debated, and Benjamiin Simmons argued that without MEAs, the WTO would not be the same today: MEAs tend to fill the void and deal with negative externalities created by trade. This explains why MEAs are not challenged.

Marceil Yeater used the CITES as an example of how an MEA can regulate trade to ensure sustainability of the resources, in a legally binding way, and allow the DSB in its ruling. On the contrary, a MEA such as the CITES can benefit from the WTO.

In conclusion, the panel agreed that both regimes are complementary, and Mark Halle suggested that maybe the way to deal with the linkage between them is not to deal with it, and enjoy the existing flexibility!

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Session 14: Speakers see crisis as reason for preserving policy space

SESSION TITLE: The world trading system in the wake of the financial crisis

This session addresses the impacts trade liberalization (in general as well as specially in agriculture and services) may have on developing countries and explores how they should respond to challenges after the crisis.

Mehdi Shafaeddin, affiliated with University of Neuchatel, formerly with UNCTA, first analyzes the structural weakness of least developed countries (LDCs), their long-term requirements and opportunities for development. He argues that LDCs need more policy space in the new competitive environment of globalization in order to pursue long-term strategies (e.g. active role of government, industry promotion policy, development of agriculture, control of capital flow, etc). He however notes that policy space for LDCs has shrunk because WTO as well as other institutions, international agreements (e.g. economic partnership agreements between the EU and developing countries) imposes constraints on them. He stresses that LDCs should resist further loss of policy space.

Umberto Celli, University of Sao Paolo, Brazil, takes Brazil’s financial services and environmental services as example to argue that policy space is important for developing countries to develop infrastructure services. He notes that Brazil has made limited liberalization commitments in financial services under the General Agreement on Trade in Services. This provides the policy space Brazil needs to restructure its financial sector and introduce rigorous financial regulations. It is because of the financial restructuring that Brazil could get away from the attack of the financial crisis. With respect to environmental services, he stresses that government’s role in providing subsidies is crucial. However, subsidies may be challenged under the WTO rules. WTO Members, especially developing country Members therefore should be cautious when making commitments.

Timothy Wise presents a case-study on how since the US agriculture subsidy program has adversely affected Mexico’s economy since the entry into force of the NAFTA. He notes that this program results in American agricultural products dumping in Mexico which causes losses to Mexican agriculture producers and leads to Mexico’s rising import dependency. Based on this case-study, he argues that trade liberalization in agriculture may bring high costs to developing countries and that transitional measures, special product protection, special safeguard measures are critical in this context. He also notes the importance to improve WTO rules on agriculture dumping.

The discussion afterwards allows the panellists to further elaborate their points. One of the issues raised is who are winners and losers in the context of liberalization.

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