Peter Gallagher

2 Comments

• Simon Lester wrote:

  March 17, 2009 at 11:29 pm

  Hi Peter,

  What’s your “plau­si­ble frame­work” for trade?  I don’t mean to make you write a dis­ser­ta­tion here, just thought maybe you had already set it out somewhere!

  Best,

  Simon
• pwg wrote:

  March 18, 2009 at 3:21 am

  Fair ques­tion, Simon.

  I mean ‘plau­si­ble’ in the sense that Dani Rodrik means it: a frame­work that is desir­able and eas­ily attained because it accom­mo­dates the wide dif­fer­ences among coun­tries in their trade and eco­nomic poli­cies that lie behind the fail­ure of the ‘single-undertaking’ con­sen­sus on the Doha agenda.

  Such a plau­si­ble frame­work need not be ‘value free’. It would favor open mar­kets, trans­parency and ‘due process’ in the admin­is­tra­tion of trade reg­u­la­tions. It sets stan­dards for the admin­is­tra­tion of trade pol­icy that min­i­mize adverse ‘spillovers’ of domes­tic poli­cies in order to avoid actual con­flicts between countries.

  The GATT is no longer this plau­si­ble frame­work: ser­vices must be encom­passed by the frame­work, and trade facil­i­ta­tion mea­sures, too. But it’s not the sin­gle under­tak­ing either. At least, not the sin­gle under­tak­ing as leg­is­lated by the Quad coun­tries in 1993.

  It is, prob­a­bly, the WTO agree­ments aug­mented by a col­lec­tion of open-ended, optional, ‘crit­i­cal mass’ agree­ments that would allow gov­ern­ments in some coun­tries (or regions,  they may be in the form of RTAs) to pur­sue deeper com­mit­ments in some product/services sec­tors or in some pol­icy domains (pro­duc­tion sub­si­dies for agri­cul­ture) on a rec­i­p­ro­cal basis.

  I have an arti­cle on this topic, co-authored with Andrew Stoler of the Ade­laide Insti­tute of Inter­na­tional Trade that is due to appear in a forth­com­ing spe­cial issue of the jour­nal Global Gov­er­nance.

  Best,

  Peter