Alan Wollf, one of the world's top trade lawyers, is now a Deputy Directors- General at the World Trade Organization in Geneva. Last Wednesday, October 17, he led off a GBD panel discussion on the challenges facing the organization. As one would have expected, Ambassador Wolff's opening presentation - and indeed the entire event - was dominated by what are arguably the two most immediate, if not the most important, issues for the future of the WTO. One is the threat to the functioning of the dispute settlement system, mainly the Appellate Body, and the other is the escalation of trade restrictions not contemplated by the WTO. We shall return to those issues in future entries.
Today's featured quote, however, comes from the concluding Question-and-Answer session at last week's event, during which there was more than a little back-and-forth over the claim of developing country status by a large swath of the WTO membership. In response to that issue, Ambassador Wolff went well beyond the question of whether "developing country" status is overused. He addressed that and then focused on the challenges facing some of the WTO's poorest and most troubled members and prospective members. Ambassador Wolff said:
Just to add a point. 120 members of the WTO consider themselves developing countries. That includes Saudi Arabia and Singapore. And the question is, are they-. Is that a homogeneous group? And, obviously, no.
COTTON AND DEVELOPMENT STATUS
DDGs, the Deputy Directors-General. We're called DDGs because we come and go, and it saves people from trying to remember our name. DDGs don't chair anything, with one exception. I chair the development forum, Consultative Forum for Cotton. And it's motivated primarily by Chad, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Mali. They are very, very, very poor countries. And their main crop is cotton. And all countries, including cotton producers-particularly cotton producers: Pakistan, and India, China, and the United States and Australia and others- want to help them.
And the help is: we're going to give you technical assistance. We'll work with the World Bank. We have donors. We have programs. We're going to have a website that tells you where you can buy seed and what the best practices are. Because their yields are---no more than10 percent the yields in Australia, which is the highest.
So there is a lot to be done. And there is a real effort within the WTO for capacity building. So, that's one aspect.
The other aspect, where you get into special and differential treatment, the developing countries say, "well, we're all alike." That is not viewed by all members as being credible And it deprives the institution from moving forward with something that can be more responsive.
AMONG THE PROSPECTIVE MEMBERS
I am in charge of, or have oversight over, the Accessions Division. The countries coming in are extremely fragile and conflict affected. What does that mean?
Somalia-one of the senior officials was killed in a bomb blast at the commerce ministry in their capital this year. It's conflict affected, but they're working very, very hard and very effectively to come in.
Why do they want to come in? The want to come in to integrate into the world economy so that they can raise their standard of living for their people and have a better shot at peace. And it's true for Sudan, for South Sudan. Afghanistan and Liberia were the last two to come in.
Kazakhstan came in in 2015. That is a country that went through, well, hell. 752 nuclear explosions tests in their territory.
Ripping up the plains, the steppes, to grow cotton, which could not sustain cotton. It wasn't built for that, which ended up with a dust storm and mass starvation. A million and a half people died. The Aral Sea dried up trying to irrigate the stuff.
These are desperate countries, who are the most enthusiastic-. Liberia had both Ebola and civil war. They're desperate to join the WTO. So, when I say I'm optimistic, part of it is that some people are looking at a major country that may be looking at the exit sometimes. I look at the 22 countries that are looking at the entrance, and it's encouraging to see. They want to have the WTO rules for domestic reform primarily. That's what they are looking for: the road to development. So, we work a lot on development, and it is going to be part of the agenda forever to work on development in the WTO.
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