Posts tagged…Critical Mass
Let’s end WTO’s Doha agony
Thu, Apr 01 2010Just in … some old news from Geneva:
"The WTO's week-long "stocktaking" of the Doha Round trade talks ended on Friday with a whimper, not a bang. The much-touted goal of concluding the negotiations toward a global trade deal before the end of 2010 - an objective laid out by heads of state last year - was quietly set aside, as officials acknowledged that political hurdles continue to block…
Read more…U.S. looks for a ‘critical mass’ climate deal
Fri, Jan 15 2010There is absolutely nothing new in U.S. exasperation with the United Nations and its overblown processes. This statement from the deputy U.S. climate envoy recalls the responses of thousands of technocrats exposed for the first time to the diplomatic morass; for decades, we've heard something similar from every new Administration.
"Pershing said the flaws in the UN process, which demands…
Multilateralism not a ‘single undertaking’
Wed, Jan 06 2010More commentary—this time from the President of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations—on the significance of the Copenhagen meeting as one of the first signs of whatever-it-turns-out-to-be that follows the pax atlantica
"Multilateralism in the 21st century is, like the century itself, likely to be more fluid and, at times, messy than what we are used to." Extract from Richard Haass in the Modeling a Doha agreement on agriculture Tue, Jul 07 2009
To conclude my series of posts on modeling a critical mass agreement on agriculture, I would like to show you how I set up UNCTAD's Agricultural Trade Policy Simulation Model (ATPSM) to project the economic impacts of an agreement to liberalize agricultural trade based on WTO's December, 2008, draft 'modalities'. In my previous post, I compared the results of this simulation with the results of…
Critical mass agreement vs the Doha Round
Thu, Jul 02 2009
We'll cut to the chase, shall we, in this fourth of my posts on modeling the impact of a 'critical mass' agreement in agriculture? Click on the tags at the left-side or at the bottom of this article to find the earlier posts.
A 'critical mass' agreement among 38 countries that account for 80 percent of world trade in the 30 top-traded agricultural products (all of them food) to eliminate import…
Opening food markets in a CM agreement
Wed, Jun 24 2009
The immediate net global gains from a 'Critical Mass' (CM) trade agreement to open markets for some 30 products in 38 of the world's largest markets would be about $10 billion. World trade in these products would expand by a third with most of the export gains won by developing countries.
This is the third post in a series of five intended to share with you the results of some simulations of an…
A Critical Mass Agreement on cereals trade
Wed, Jun 17 2009
In this post I'll describe the simulated impacts of a Critical Mass (CM) trade liberalization agreement on global trade in cereals. This is the second of five posts about some simulations I've created to investigate whether CM agreements could be an alternative to the standard WTO approach to opening up world markets for agriculture.
The bottom line: an improvement in global welfare of between…
Modeling ‘critical mass’ trade agreements
Mon, Jun 15 2009
In the past couple of weeks, I've been modeling the economic impacts of an alternative way to open up world agricultural markets using 'critical mass' trade agreements.
I thought I would share some of the results of the modeling with you, here on my website, over the next couple of weeks.
The simulations run inside the trade model suggest that there would be huge wins from adopting a new, more…
Two tracks out of the Doha wasteland?
Thu, May 28 2009
Pascal Lamy wants to stir up more action in the WTO's Doha negotiations —at least its appearance—by opening up a 'second front' for the exchanges. One group will battle on to refine the technical rules and one will start a 'show and tell' exploration of the implementation of the rules.
"My own sense is that there is scope to work on these two areas along two simultaneous tracks. One would see…Where will Kirk take the Doha entreprise?
Wed, Apr 15 2009
Australia's Trade Minister, Simon Crean, is doggedly faithful to the Doha round. He has recently visited Ron Kirk, the new US Trade representative. No doubt, to gee him up.
But the peak United States industry groups have it right in their letter to the new US President. There cannot be an ambitious outcome in WTO negotiations unless there is substantial degree reciprocity from those developing…
A better way ahead for WTO
Thu, Dec 18 2008
"As we have argued before, governments need to look for other options such as smaller, more manageable standalone multilateral deals." extract from: FT Editorial - The broken promise of DohaA 'smaller, stand-alone' deal is almost certain to lead to a plurilateral agreement among a sub-set of WTO's 153 members because it will probably not offer sufficient gain to all of them. But that's OK in my…A better way to negotiate on agriculture
Thu, Dec 04 2008
Next week, at the Institute for International Trade in Adelaide, Andrew Stoler (Institute Director, former Deputy Director-General of WTO) and I are presenting a conference in our project on future frameworks for WTO agriculture agreements.
In addition to our own research (some linked here) we've commissioned the help of leading agriculture and trade policy research centers in Brazil, China,…
