Peter Gallagher

Evenett, like many other ana­lysts, has been think­ing about why it is so dif­fi­cult to reach agree­ments in the WTO nego­ti­a­tions. One of the rea­sons that most cite is the dilu­tion of the ‘polar­ity’ of global trade in the second-half of last cen­tury with the growth of ‘multi-polar’, glob­al­ized, mar­kets. The dis­tri­b­u­tion of power and influ­ence in the man­age­ment of the trad­ing sys­tem in WTO is not always aligned with the dis­tri­b­u­tion of mar­ket power.

Now, what if we add the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion to the ‘poten­tial poles’ list, as I have done in the table below? Rus­sia looks likely to join WTO in the next year (or so). A smaller econ­omy than China or India but roughly the size of Brazil; a bit wealth­ier than Brazil and with twice the global trade pres­ence, but; with no more rec­i­p­ro­cal trade nego­ti­a­tion expe­ri­ence than any of the others.

Does ‘four poles’ make a more sta­ble plat­form for the global trade framework?