Free Economics Dissertations - There Will Be An Agreement On The Fourth ‘new Issue’ Trade Facilitation.
There will be an agreement on the fourth ‘New Issue’ trade facilitation. This will bring important benefits to developing countries in the form of increased efficiency in trade flows.
On domestic support for agriculture, the EU, US and other developed countries will have to harmonise their varying forms of trade-distorting domestic support and make a down payment of a 20% reduction.
On cotton, developing countries were pushing for special attention to be given to their cotton exports, which are hampered by developed country subsidies of their own industries. The membership, including the US, has consequently committed itself to tackling these cotton problems ambitiously, expeditiously, and specifically, within the agricultural negotiations.
Not much progress was made with improvements on market access Agricultural and Non-Agricultural goods.
The next ministerial meeting is scheduled to take place in Hong Kong in December 2005.
Summary and Conclusions
This article looks at the birth of the DOHA Development agenda, with regard to what the World Trade Organisation was setup to do right from the very beginning. It identifies the reasons for the trade talks at Doha 2001, Cancun 2003, and Geneva 2004. Identification of the major areas for negotiations and consultation ranged from, Agriculture, Market access for Non-Agricultural products, Implementation of issues related to trade and investment, Trade related aspects of Intellectual Property to Finance and Information technology to which a declaration is made as to agreements between Industrialised nations and Developing nations.
It is worthwhile to say hear that trade policy should be taken out of the hands of foreign ministries and trade negotiators, who regard every tariff cut or reduced barrier of any kind as a concession on one hand, and then requiring compensation in order to finance ministries, Central Banks and mainstream economic advisors who can see that citizens of their own countries are amongst the biggest gainers from a liberalized trade policy. Altogether it would be helpful if trade policy was no longer treated as an area where specialist requirements are the norm. Instead the issue of slashing barriers, unilaterally if needs be, should be treated as part of a general liberalisation or free market agenda. The answer to this would be that the political motives of the various members of the WTO might hinder domestic pressures from their various countries, and therefore unpredictable as to the outcome of an agreement.
REFERENCES
Lipsey, R. G., and Chrystal, A. K, (2004), Economics, Tenth Edition. Oxford.
Brittan, S., (2003), The USA and Europe: Two, three or more economic cultures? Gulbenkian Foundation Conference. Lisbon.
Information Department, World Trade Organisation, rue de Lausanne 154, CH-1211 Geneva 21, Switzerland.
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