On 12-13 March, the Economic and Social Council convened its annual high-level dialogue with the World Trade Organization and the Bretton Woods institutions, on “Coherence, Coordination and Cooperation in the context of Financing for Development”.  See the agenda here, and an extensive background note from the UN Secretary-General here.  Access to all meeting documents can be found here. We note that H.E. Mr. Anthony Mothae Maruping (Lesotho), President of the UNCTAD Trade and Development Board and President of the Preparatory Committee for UNCTAD XIII was a featured speaker.  The financing of sustainable development is a major topic here, as it is at UNCTAD XIII, along with “sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth, job creation, and productive investment and trade”.  This is all very ambitious, but again we sense a momentum for the financing and FDI issues.  We are also interested to note that the World Bank is preparing its World Development Report 2013 on “Jobs”. Look for a follow-up article on the outcomes of the ECOSOC meeting in an upcoming issue of the CMBD News.

With a momentum for looking at financing and FDI in the world of development policy, we are including a thematic discussion on the role of business in development in our CMBD meetings this year.  At our first Council Dialogue on 23 February, we met with UNCTAD Secretary-General Supachai Panitchpakdi as well as senior officials from UNDP, WTO, World Bank, ILO, FAO, USAID, and the diplomatic missions of Sweden, Germany and Nigeria.  We reported on this two weeks ago (27 February 2012 CMBD News), and we bring it up again here to note that we have a number of action items to consider that are pertinent to the preparations for UNCTAD XIII.  We will also be continuing with this thematic focus on a visit to the OECD in April.  The February discussions included recommendations for defining and establishing an inclusive platform for dialogue with the private sector as a partner in assessing and implementing development priorities.  Improving linkages between big business and small and medium enterprises in global supply chains, engaging in the preparation of a set of Sustainable Development Goals at the UN, developing a financial framework for development funding that includes private sector investment, developing a set of principles for all stakeholders in the development process and a monitoring framework for compliance with these principles were all mentioned.  We will continue to highlight these recommendations for action as we review policy debates and events here in our weekly commentary for CMBD News.

Early this month, the US Trade Representative’s Office came out with the US 2012 Trade Policy Agenda and 2011 Annual Report on the Trade Agreements Program (see the report here).  In this Presidential election year, one cannot expect any new trade-opening initiatives beyond the existing set of bilateral agreements with Colombia, Korea and Panama plus the Trans Pacific Partnership.  More generally, the report emphasizes the priorities of jobs-related initiatives and the expansion of job-intensive US exports.  In the same week, President Barack Obama also issued an executive order to create the new Interagency Enforcement Center to strengthen US oversight against unfair trade practices by others.   Media coverage concentrated on these priorities and made no reference to US priorities at the WTO.  Nonetheless, there is still a considerable amount of detail in the report devoted to US policy positions at the WTO.   The report reaffirms that the Doha Round is at an impasse but still favors “turning the page toward fresh, credible approaches to market-opening trade negotiations in the WTO” and to fostering “dialogue on forging productive paths in other aspects of the WTO’s mandate”.

We were pleased to see that the testimony on a panel on “The Future of US Trade Negotiations” included James H. Quigley, Senior Principal at Deloitte, who agreed that multi-lateral trade negotiations at the WTO were still an important avenue to pursue.  The panel was convened last week by Rep. David Camp (R-MI) the Chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means.  Mr. Quigley spoke about the widening gap between the pace of multi-lateral trade negotiations and the product/service life cycles of business, and the importance of fixing this disconnect.   He elaborated on the need for consistent rules on investment, liberalization of trade in services, the disruptions of behind-the-border regulations and divergent regulatory approaches (especially in the accounting profession), the difficulties of competing with state-owned enterprises, and defining the responsibilities of the new group of emerging economies.  Finally, in contrast to the Administration’s shifting attention to the Asia-Pacific region, Mr. Quigley encouraged the US Government to place a priority on the US-EU trading relationship and described the progress being made through the Trans-Atlantic Business Dialogue.  See his testimony here.  We thank the Washington International Business Council for bringing the report and the testimony to our attention. We look forward to working with CMBD member Charlie Heeter of Deloitte who is coordinating our joint program with WIBC and the TABD in Paris on 12 to 13 April.  There we will have the opportunity to discuss the impact of OECD work on many of these issues, such as investment, state-owned enterprises and the role of the emerging economies, as well as the future of trade negotiations generally.

The WTO is starting to come back to life after the lull of the months since the end-of-year break that extended well into the New Year.  The rotations of chairs for the standing committees, as we reported last week, was finally resolved, and even the new chair of the Negotiating Group on Rules, Ambassador Wayne McCook from Jamaica, was smoothly announced as succeeding Ambassador Dennis Francis of Trinidad and Tobago.   This Negotiating Group is part of the Doha Development Agenda groupings whose chairs are subject to serving until the next Ministerial Conference.  It covers the negotiations on anti-dumping, subsidies, fisheries subsidies and regional trade agreements, which may well benefit from the “fresh, credible approaches” to market-opening trade negotiations that were highlighted in the US 2012 trade priorities report.

There was also a relatively lively debate in the TRIPS Council on the pros and cons of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), promptly reported on the WTO website here as well as by the regular followers of intellectual property issues (IP-Watch and ICTSD, for example).  See our news feeds for the sources.  The signatories to ACTA (Australia, Canada, EU, Japan, Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the US) were strongly supportive of the agreement as a tool for enforcing against the proliferation of counterfeit goods, while criticisms were raised by India, China, Brazil, Ecuador, Egypt and Thailand.  So the dividing lines remain, especially in terms of the implications of ACTA for access to generic medicines or even to the Internet, and we note that the ACTA ratification process is attracting debate in the European Parliament and elsewhere.   Another interesting issue in the TRIPS Council was a challenge raised by the Dominican Republic about the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill in Australia as a possible violation of trade rules, countered by testimony from the WHO about the compatibility with the WTO’s trade rules with the provisions of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control calling for states to implement such packaging restrictions on tobacco trademarks.  The plain packaging requirement goes into effect in December 2012, and one can anticipate the beginnings of a trade dispute for the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body.

On other matters and more to the point of the remnants of the Doha Round, Ambassador Luzius Wasescha (Switzerland), Chair of the negotiating group on industrial goods (the NAMA group) announced a renewed effort to discuss both tariffs and non-tariff barriers for industrial goods in the next couple of weeks.   We have not yet seen a new schedule for negotiations on agriculture or other aspects of the Doha Agenda but will be interested to follow the “fresh, credible approaches” and perhaps even the “forging of productive paths” on the other aspects of the WTO’s mandate.  We note that the International Chamber of Commerce is hosting a  first “Business World Trade Agenda” meeting for business executives at the WTO today and tomorrow, on 13 to 14 March.

We had our first CMBD dialogue of the year on “Business in Development: Changing Concepts of Development and Linkages to the Private Sector” on Thursday, 23 February, marking the 5th Anniversary of the CMBD. We were honored to welcome a return visit with Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi, Secretary-General of UNCTAD, who was our inaugural keynote speaker at the first CMBD event in February 2007, and has graciously shared his insights with us on frequent special occasions. We also benefited from a full programme of outstanding guests – Swedish Ambassador to the WTO Joakim Reiter, Director of the UNDP Geneva Office Cécile Molinier, WTO Deputy Director-General Valentine Rugwabiza, Director of the World Bank Group’s Geneva Office Selina Jackson and others from USAID, the German Mission, the Nigerian Mission, ITC, FAO and ILO. We were aided as well by a background briefing note on the Busan Partnership for Effective Development, business-inclusive initiatives at UNDP, the World Bank, and the WTO and in bilateral aid programmes. Participants discussed the challenges of bringing trade and development communities together, concentrating on the development-effectiveness of aid, multiple approaches to partnering with the private sector, the challenges of new donors, balancing markets with regulation, finding the right platform for business engagement in development, linking multinational enterprises with small and medium enterprises and smallholders, the role of government in facilitating distributive models, business as a key source of innovation, the success of ad hoc coalitions and learning how to shift from capacity-building to actual partnerships. We will pick up on these themes in future CMBD dialogues, including our planned visit to the OECD in April.

A few weeks ago the WTO General Council elected by consensus Norwegian Ambassador Elin Johanson as Chairperson for the year, but the GC was delayed in reaching a consensus for the other chairpersons, including that of the Dispute Settlement Body.  Traditionally, the Chair of the Dispute Settlement Board becomes the Chair of the General Council in the following year, and it seems that it took longer than usual to reach a consensus on this and other appointments.  The reason?  Next year, the WTO General Council will elect a new Director-General to succeed Mr. Pascal Lamy, whose second term ends in September 2013.  The Chair of the General Council in 2013 therefore will play a key role in overseeing the election.  The original slate of chairpersons apparently included the ambassador of Singapore for this post, but the consensus was reached and confirmed at a special session of the General Council on Friday, 24 February for the Dispute Settlement Board Chairperson to be Ambassador Shahid Bashir from Pakistan.  The following is the full slate of new Chairpersons (also available here):

The General Council also agreed on the appointment of the following chairs of the bodies under the Trade Negotiations Committee:

These bodies of the Trade Negotiations Committee are involved in aspects of the Doha Development Agenda, and the Chairs continue to serve until the next full Ministerial Conference, unlike the regular committees for which the Chairs are only appointed for one year. It is interesting to note that the former chair of the Special Session of the Committee on Trade and Development was Ambassador Shahid Bashir and is now Ambassador Kwok Fook Seng of Singapore. The Chair of the regular Committee on Trade and Development, Ambassador Anthony Mothae Maruping, by the way, is also the Chair of the Preparatory Committee for UNCTAD XIII, a double duty.

The Committee is also hosting a special Workshop on “Aid for Trade, sustainable development and the green economy” on Wednesday, 29 February, just prior to its regular session. The report for this workshop provides an overview of where Aid for Trade is supporting green economy initiatives to show the increasing synergy between the two.  They are mostly in economic infrastructure projects and less in building productive capacity and even less in trade policy and regulatory projects.  See the notice and report here.

Following the prognosis of impasse in the Doha Round of trade liberalization at the 8th WTO Ministerial Conference before the holidays in December, a few of the trade ministers came back together in their traditional “side events” at the World Economic Forum in Davos in late January, hosted by the Swiss Economics Minister, currently Mr. Johann Schneider-Ammann. Some of them also participated in a WEF panel on “After Doha: The Future of Global Trade”. See a report here. New negotiating approaches are to be encouraged in this coming year of caution, a year in which “political energy” is in “short supply”, according to the latest turn-of-phrase from the WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy. Parallels are made to the shortage of political energy in climate change and the management of currency exchange rates, but no direct reference seems to be made to the ambitions for political energy in the “shaping of new models” for the “great transformations” that were featured in the overriding theme for the Davos event this year.

US Trade Representative Ron Kirk suggests that a plurilateral services negotiation of the willing might be explored, while the major emerging economy trade ministers of Brazil, India and South Africa reacted negatively. All seem to agree that the WTO should continue to exert its weight against protectionism, fight for the interests of the least developed countries and maybe look for the trade agenda of the 21st century. We do note that the WTO’s Working Group on Trade, Debt and Finance will in fact have a two-day symposium on 27 to 28 March 2012 on the connection between exchange rates and trade. So there is some momentum on 21st century type issues. We still haven’t heard anything more, however, about Mr. Lamy’s proposal to appoint a Panel of Multi-Stakeholders. But that may be coming soon. Meanwhile, a lot of bilateral and regional trade negotiations attract attention, including the possibility of an EU-US initiative. And the dispute resolution process at the WTO continues to churn out important decisions, including a recent appellate ruling against China on raw materials for steel, aluminum and chemicals brought by the US, EU and Mexico.

A seminar today in Geneva hosted by the International Trade Center, featuring keynote speaker Professor Deardorff of the University of Michigan, addresses growing concern over the apparent rise in the implementation of non-tariff barriers to trade as a means to protect domestic industry hit hard in the lingering aftermath of the crash of  2008/2009. Details are available here. As we reported earlier we have been following the online discussion forum underway to discuss the main theme of the WTO 2012 annual trade report, on non-tariff measures and services regulations as barriers to trade, and exploring the possibilities of some form of regulatory convergence or multi-layered governance structure. See that  discussion here. While the descriptions and consequences of NTBs are well defined, progress in meeting the challenges has been fleeting.  We look forward to an insightful discussion.

We sat in on the event co-hosted by UNCTAD and the ILO to tout the recently released book: Trade and Employment: From Myths to Facts. A sizable crowd turned out to hear several of the book’s editors and authors, including the ILO’s Marion Jensen, Coordinator for the Trade and Employment Programme; ILO Executive Director José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs; and Ralf Peters, Economic Affaris Officer, UNCTAD.  The premise of the discussion is that while there have been repeated assertions that trade liberalization contributes to growth and hence creates jobs, perceptions that there have been negative effects on labour markets persist.  These perceptions may have been exacerbated by the “Great Recession”  of 2oo8/2009 and its aftermath, policy makers fear.  Evidence in support of claims that increases in trade yield increases in employment is elusive.

With these notions as a backdrop, Mr. Salazar explained the three objectives of the book: to fill knowledge gaps by taking stock of available evidence and analyses; to contribute to the “tool kit” for conducting analysis of trade impacts on employment; and to assist in the development of policies to enhance the quantity and quality of jobs stemming from increased trade. It was clear from the discussion that there are a myriad of considerations that need to be taken into account when formulating coherent policies to enhance trade while promoting job growth.  Beyond the consideration of growth in output (and hence growth in jobs) are the issues of job quality (with respect to labor standards, wages, working time and conditions of work etc); gender considerations; and social protection.  Policies applicable to one country may not well serve another. The informal sector cannot be ignored. The distribution and mobility of skills, educational and workplace opportunities, contributions of foreign direct investment and the promotion of domestic private investment, the state of infrastructure, levels of development of institutions for policy formation and implementation — all of these factors enter into the mix for assessing trade impacts on employment.  In the end, our impression is that while much has been done to address the issues, much more is still needed before definitive conclusions can be drawn.

The book can be obtained as a pdf file from the ILO website.  Click here to go to the download page. Coincidentally, the ILO has issued its annual report on global employment trends and the jobs.  Click here for details.

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