Diferencia entre revisiones de «The world trading system without US leadership»

Robert Baldwin, VOXEU, 17 de mayo de 2010

Since the signing of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1948, the US has been the world leader in promoting the reduction of tariffs and nontariff trade barriers among nations and establishing trading rules that serve to maintain the liberalisation achieved.

Among the achievements under US leadership have been:

- The negotiation of eight multilateral tariff-reducing negotiations that reduced average tariffs on industrial goods among industrial countries from 40% in the late 1940s to the current level of less than 4%;

- The negotiation of a series of codes of good behaviour covering such nontariff trade barriers as subsidies and countervailing duties, anti-dumping practices, safeguards, government procurement practices, customs valuation and licensing, and technical trade barriers (standards);

- The extension of GATT rules to cover services and trade-related intellectual property rights; and the creation of a meaningful disputes settlement system.

Obama’s backing away from leadership on trade

Yet the Obama administration has backed away from this leadership role. Take the stalled Doha Round negotiations, for example. The immediate reason for the collapse in negotiations in July 2008 was a disagreement between the US and India over the extent to which developing countries could impose safeguards in response to import surges of agricultural goods. India wished to have the unencumbered right to raise duties to the level it deemed necessary to protect the livelihood conditions of its farmers. The US expressed concern that this freedom of action would lead to tariffs being raised to levels above those agreed on in the Uruguay Round negotiations and thus would represent a step backward from the hard-won liberalisation gains in agriculture of that Round. US negotiators also argued that the participation by such advanced developing countries as India, China, and Brazil in sector negotiations aimed at significantly reducing tariffs for such products as chemicals was necessary to provide a better balance of concessions for the US, even though the Doha Round mandate specified that participation in such negotiations would be voluntary. The Obama administration has continued to express these concerns.

Moreover, Ron Kirk, the current US Trade Representative has stressed the importance of bilateral discussions with the leading developing countries aimed at better ascertaining the manner in which these countries plan to use the “flexibilities” provided in the general rules for reducing trade barriers in the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. For example, certain proportions of the products of developing countries can be designated as sensitive products as well as special products and be subject to less than formula cuts or no cuts at all. US negotiators argue that this information is needed so that they can determine the extent that the Doha Round opens markets for the US. Kirk has confirmed that such negotiations are ongoing but has not indicated if progress is being made nor the extent of US dissatisfaction with the negotiations. The US seems to want to avoid being accused of doing nothing to further the Doha Round negotiations but also avoid actions that might lead to real progress.