What’s Left for the WTO?
Suppose that when addressing the question of “what’s left for the WTO?,” tariff negotiators relied not on the agenda established in 2001 but instead on the terms-of-trade theory of trade agreements to identify negotiating priorities. This paper use...
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| Language: | English en_US |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2015
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2015/12/25512759/what’s-left-wto http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23468 |
| Summary: | Suppose that when addressing the
question of “what’s left for the WTO?,” tariff negotiators
relied not on the agenda established in 2001 but instead on
the terms-of-trade theory of trade agreements to identify
negotiating priorities. This paper uses the lens of the
terms-of-trade theory to investigate three areas in which it
is frequently alleged that currently applied tariffs remain
“too high”; the implication being that the WTO’s job
performance to date is incomplete. This includes applied
tariffs for countries that are not members of the WTO,
applied MFN tariffs for WTO members that are unbound, and
applied MFN tariffs for WTO members set in the presence of
large amounts of tariff binding overhang. These are almost
exclusively the domain of developing countries’ own trade
policies and they are collectively important; 3.5 billion
people currently live in countries in which the WTO has had
minimal effect for one of these three reasons. This paper
builds upon recent developments in the empirical literature
to present evidence—some direct, some indirect—that sheds
light on each area. It then identifies specific needs for
additional research to clarify policy implications for the
future role of the WTO in the ever-changing international
trading system. |
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