Developing Countries and ‘The Future of the WTO’

Abstract

The Report of the Director-General’s Consultative Board covers a range of areas all critical to the future of the WTO. The coverage is impressive, and the conclusions and recommendations, reflecting as they do the thoughtful analysis of individuals with long experience of the multilateral trading system, provide much to reflect on. They deserve wide consideration and critical analysis such as they have been receiving in this Journal. Comprehensive as they are, however, the principal conclusions and recommendations of the Report seem puzzlingly reticent about one of the major issues facing the world trading system and the WTO – coming to terms with the varied claims of developing country Members of the WTO, or more generally working out the relationship between the rules of the trading system and development. The centrality of development to international trade is recognized in the very name of the current multilateral trade negotiations. The Doha Round was launched with the Doha Development Agenda. The failure at Cancun was based at least in the view of some on a rift between developed and developing states. 1 There emerged from Cancun a ‘Group of 21’ or what is now ‘Group of 20 plus’, a coalition of developing states that wanted a round that reflected their concerns. But the roots go deeper than that. The Uruguay Round is often portrayed as a betrayal. Developing countries agreed to TRIPS in exchange for a liberalization of agricultural and other trade that never eventuated. 2 This has not only been an impediment to the new Round, it has also affected the functioning of the WTO.