Trade, development and the WTO: an action agenda beyond the Cancún Ministerial

This Interim Report is a preliminary output of the Millennium Project Task Force 9 on open, rule-based Trading Systems. It points out that promises about the “development” round now need to be replaced by a more concrete, practical approach to identifying what the current round might – and might not – contribute to development.

The Report therefore suggests and elaborates on a number of aspects which a viable approach should incorporate. They include:

• a focus on the gains for developing countries from the traditional business of the trading system, which would require the dismantling of trade barriers as well as increasing effective market access. This also requires an assessment of developing country interests and possibilities in the three core areas of market access – agriculture, services and non-agricultural market access negotiations.
• the realisation that the trading system can best contribute to development by granting developing countries additional benefits or varying degrees of exemptions from trade obligations. This needs to considers the extent to which special and differential treatment (SDT) serves developing country interests – for market access, in terms of experience with trade preferences; and for the rules, where it asks whether some rules themselves need revisiting.
• a discussion what the scope of the trading system should be in new policy areas and whether proposed new rules – on the Singapore issues of trade and investment, competition policy, transparency in government procurement and trade facilitation – are in the interests of developing countries.