Earlier this month in Geneva, twenty-nine negotiators from 15 countries took part in a two-week seminar on WTO Accession Rules. Each of the participants was from a country in the queue to join the World Trade Organization, and on February 11, the negotiators heard an address from
Alan Wolff, the WTO Deputy Director-General with responsibility for accessions. Ambassador Wolff's talk was part history lesson, part reminiscence, and part pep talk.
As with all of Alan Wolff's speeches, the parts clicked together in a memorable presentation. You will want to read his February 11 speech for yourself. As usual, however, we shall share a few fragments here beginning with the paragraph from which today's featured quote was taken:
"The origins of the GATT stem from the recovery, reconstruction and development effort to deal with the ruins of the Second World War. The multilateral trade regime was part of the architecture, along with the World Bank, the IMF and bilateral aid to underwrite the new and very fragile peace. Some joined the multilateral trading system, and some did not. The Soviet Union chose to observe rather than join. That failure was just one factor in the complex set of reasons there is no Soviet Union today."
In a sense, the reference to the former Soviet Union above was little more than a conversational aside, when Ambassador Wolff spoke to the negotiators on February 11. He was somewhat more expansive on that topic in his remarks last September in the new capital city of Astana, Kazakhstan. Here is a brief excerpt from that speech.
AMB. WOLFF:
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in 1991, international trade played a powerful role in transforming the economies of the newly independent states and in deepening their relationships with the rest of the world. GATT/WTO membership was used by them - and other formerly central planned economies, such as China and Vietnam - as a vehicle to modernize and adapt to market-based economic principles.
Despite their similar paths of economic reforms, accession experiences have differed widely. While some joined the WTO after a short period of negotiations - for instance, Kyrgyz Republic in 1998 and Georgia in 2000, after 3 to 4 years of negotiations, others, such as the Russian Federation and Kazakhstan, spent nearly 20 years in negotiations and only joined the Organization more recently, in 2012 and 2015, respectively. Generally, the longer the accession negotiation took, the greater the level of obligations the applicant has undertaken.
Obviously, it was the location - Astana - that inspired much of the detail in that earlier speech. And it a place to which we are bound to return, in print if not in fact, as Astana has been chosen as the site for the next WTO Ministerial meeting, scheduled for June 2020.
A Pep Talk. But let's return to the more recent of the two speeches we have we have mentioned - the one at the seminar for negotiators on the WTO's rules of accession. A good portion of that was devoted to talking with the negotiators in the course about their careers and the meaning of the work they are engaged in. Again, here is Alan Wolff:
Thirty-six countries have joined the WTO since it was founded 24 years ago. Several of their chief negotiators for accession have talked with you already. ...
I listened with interest [to those negotiators]. Clearly for many, maybe for all of them, working for their countries' WTO accession was a high point of their professional careers. Why? Because they got to know their economies intimately, including what its needs were. They got to know what other governments wanted of them. They played one of the most important roles for their countries that few have the opportunity to experience.
When you have gone through this training and then the accession process you will know more about the international trading system than any trade minister of any country who has not gone through this WTO accession process. You have a phenomenal and rare opportunity and learning experience. You will need to negotiate both at home among businesses and ministries, and turn around and negotiate with foreign countries, because all current members can have a say as to whether you join the WTO. You will become very good negotiators. If you already are good, you will get even better. ...
And once accession is done, and your ministers sign the Protocol of Accession, you will have pride in the fact of having done more for your country and its people than most ever have the opportunity to do.
