Global Trade Alert

Just before the London G-20 Meeting in April, Andy Stoler and I wrote a paper for a booklet published by the Center for Economic Policy Research in which we suggested that the best way to make G-20 governments live up to their promises was to expose their misdeeds on trade policy—including those that nominally complied with their WTO obligation—using a public website.

Specifically, we recommended that the site should not be run by one of the global institutions (WTO, World Bank) that are owned by governments, but should be a private venture open to contributions from individuals around the world. Why? Well, as the FT notes, in an editorial today, sovereigns are not likely to put much pressure on themselves:

"The problem with naming and shaming wrongdoers is that, all too often, they turn out to be shameless." Extract from Financial Times

I am delighted to learn that the co-editor of the booklet (Simon Evenett) and the publishers (CEPR) have created just such a website: Global Trade Alert. It has been launched in the past couple of weeks with the backing of institutional sponsors (government funds, mostly) and an advisory board of distinguished analysts. GTA already lists a couple of dozen measures with useful details including the trading partners and tariff lines affected (for goods measures).

A nicely implemented and potentially intriguing experiment in global transparency. Please visit and contribute.

Tags for this entry: trade protection g20 transparency surveillance