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Wednesday, January 31, 2007

The WTO goes back to the future

There's talk about restarting WTO talks soon. But according to the IHT the new talks will happen on a product by product-by-product basis, rather than the across-the-board formulas which have been discussed so far.

That would take the WTO way back the way that it (or rather the GATT) used to work in 1947. Back when crucial trade talks used to take place in glamorous locations like Torquay, trade ministers got sick of endless haggling over individual tariffs and decided to start hacking right across all tariffs with "formula cuts" (say, a 10% reduction in all tariffs). That simple change turbocharged the process of globalisation.

Now, thanks to endless intransigence from the EU (and some others) we are back to square one. Hmmmph.

At least some people seem to see the problem for the EU: Jean-Claude Trichet noted that "Intra-EU trade is going fast [but] extra-EU trade is going faster."

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