{"id":139674,"date":"2021-10-07T20:37:10","date_gmt":"2021-10-07T15:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=139674"},"modified":"2021-10-16T12:31:25","modified_gmt":"2021-10-16T07:01:25","slug":"trade-multilateralism-at-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/trade-multilateralism-at-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"Trade multilateralism at risk\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Synopsis<\/strong>: About WTO\u2019s crisis, various challenges faced by WTO and the way forward.<\/span><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

The World Trade Organization (WTO)\u00a0is the global trade body. Currently, it is facing a serious existential crisis.\u00a0The upcoming\u00a0WTO ministerial\u00a0meeting which will\u00a0be\u00a0held in Geneva, provides an opportunity to save this institution.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What crisis WTO is facing today?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

The crisis is related to the vacancies in the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization (WTO).<\/p>\n

The Appellate Body (AB)<\/strong>, the highest instance of the WTO dispute settlement, is part of the WTO\u2019s dispute settlement mechanism. Since December 2019, the AB has stopped functioning due to rising vacancies. It has led to an increase in number of pending appeals. <\/span><\/p>\n

Over the years, the U.S. has consistently blocked the appointment of AB members resulting in the present crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. even rejected the proposal to find a solution to this and also denied the proposal of the European Union to establish an alternative interim appellate arbitration mechanism. With this, countries now have an option not to comply with the WTO panel decisions.<\/span><\/p>\n

As the Appellate Body is unable to hear new appeals, no disputes can now be resolved at the highest instance, causing widespread concern in the context of escalating global trade protectionism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What are the challenges that WTO currently faces?<\/span><\/b><\/h5>\n

On public stock holding: <\/span><\/b>WTO failed to find a solution of public stockholding for food security purposes as decided in 2015 Nairobi meeting. This is\u00a0a\u00a0concern for\u00a0countries like India that use Minimum Support Price (MSP)-backed mechanisms to procure food\u00a0grains. The WTO rules allow countries to procure, stock and distribute food.\u00a0However, if such procurement is done at MSP that is\u00a0higher than the external reference price,\u00a0then the budgetary support provided shall\u00a0be considered trade-distorting and is subject\u00a0to an overall cap.\u00a0<\/span>With rising prices and the\u00a0need to do higher procurement to support\u00a0farmers and provide food to the poor at\u00a0subsidised\u00a0prices, India might breach the cap.\u00a0Countries have agreed that legal\u00a0suits will not be brought if countries breach\u00a0the cap.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Waiving TRIPS agreement for COVID medical products<\/strong>: The WTO member countries continue to disagree on the need of waiving the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement for COVID-19 related medical products. T<\/strong><\/span>his waiver would\u00a0increase the\u00a0accessibility of COVID-19 medical products, including vaccines.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Regulation of irrational fishing subsidies<\/strong>: WTO is close to signing a deal on regulating irrational subsidies provided for fishing. These subsidies have led to the overexploitation of marine resources by countries like China. This deal should provide a balance between conserving ocean resources and the livelihood concerns of millions of marginal fishermen. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Plurilateral agreements: <\/span><\/b>The deadlock at the WTO has led to the emergence of mega plurilateral trade agreements like the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement. These plurilateral agreements not only hamper the global governance on international trade but also push the multilateral order to the danger.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What is the way forward?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h5>\n

On public stock holding<\/strong>: In long term, we <\/span>need\u00a0to find a permanent\u00a0solution such as not counting MSP\u00a0as trade-distorting.<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On TRIPS waiver<\/strong>: The WTO needs to adopt a waiver in the upcoming ministerial meeting.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On regulation of fishing subsidies<\/strong>: India and other developing countries should insist on an effective special and differential treatment provision that requisite policy space.<\/span><\/p>\n

On plurilateral agreements<\/strong>: We need rule based global order. Institutional multilateralism is the remedy to unilateralism and economic nationalism. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite many flaws, WTO is the only forum where developing countries like India can push for evolving an inclusive global trading order.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Source<\/strong>: This post is based on the article “Trade multilateralism at risk<\/strong>” published in The Hindu<\/strong> on 7th October 2021<\/strong>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Synopsis: About WTO\u2019s crisis, various challenges faced by WTO and the way forward. Introduction\u00a0 The World Trade Organization (WTO)\u00a0is the global trade body. Currently, it is facing a serious existential crisis.\u00a0The upcoming\u00a0WTO ministerial\u00a0meeting which will\u00a0be\u00a0held in Geneva, provides an opportunity to save this institution.\u00a0 What crisis WTO is facing today?\u00a0 The crisis is related to… Continue reading Trade multilateralism at risk\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10328,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[212,8778,10221,457],"class_list":["post-139674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-2","tag-important-international-institutions","tag-trade-multilateralism","tag-wto","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1700487353},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10328"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}