Special and differential treatment and the Doha "Development" Round

Journal of World Trade

Volumn 37, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 395-416

  Hart, Michael ^a   Dymond, Bill ^a  

^a CARLETON UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 21144446542     PISSN: 10116702     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.54648/trad2003021     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. In their Declaration, ministers agreed to pay special attention to the needs of developing and least developed members no less than 27 times, stressing not only technical assistance and capacity building, but also differential treatment in rule development and expectations of reciprocity. See Doha Ministerial Declaration, WT/MIN(01)/DEC/1 of 20 November 2001, accessed at .
2. To be sure, efforts have been made to develop such underpinnings, only to be found wanting by more thorough economic analysis. Douglas A. Irwin, in Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade and Free Trade Under Fire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996, 2002) provides the most up-to-date, thorough, and elegant analysis of the many unsuccessful efforts over the years to dispute the theories underpinning the impact of free trade and open economies on economic development and poverty alleviation.
3. It is these two facts that allowed economist Andrew Rose to reach the wholly predictable conclusion that membership in the GATT/WTO has made little difference to most of its membership. Of course, it would have been helpful if he had integrated these facts into his analysis and conclusions rather than leaving the wholly erroneous impression, reinforced by superficial media stories, that GATT/WTO membership makes little difference to a country's trade performance. It does make a difference, a huge difference, to its economic performance by expanding the opportunity for trade, but only if a country takes its obligations seriously and takes full advantage of the opportunities the regime offers. Most developing countries - and thus most WTO/GATT Members - chose otherwise. See Andrew Rose, "Do we really know that the WTO increases trade?", CEPR Discussion Paper 3538, and "Weighing up the WTO: Does the world's free-trade club actually work?", The Economist, 21 November 2002.
4. See, e.g., Kimberly Ann Elliott (ed.), Corruption and the Global Economy (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1997).
5. See WTO document WT/COMTD/W/77/Rev. 1/Add.4 of 7 February 2002 for an inventory demonstrating the low level of utilization of many of these provisions.
6. A good overview can be found in WTO, "High Level Symposium on Trade and Development, Geneva, 17-18 March 1999", accessed at .
7. See also Michael Hart, Fifty Years of Canadian Tradecraft: Canada and the GATT 1947-1997 (Ottawa: Centre for Trade Policy and Law, 1997).
8. GATT, Trends in International Trade, A Report by a Panel of Experts (Geneva: GATT, 1958).
9. Most of the newly independent, former colonies, acceded on the basis of Article XXVI:5c, i.e., sponsorship by their former metropolitan power, thus avoiding the scrutiny and negotiations inherent in a normal accession process under Article XXXIII. This easier process prompted GATT's chief economist in the 1970s, Jan Tumlir, to observe that GATT seemed more to be running a recruiting than a screening operation. Can the International Economic Order be Saved?, World Economy 1 (October 1977), 11.
10. There is a vast literature describing the problems of contingency protection. A good introduction can be found in Anne O. Krueger, American Trade Policy: A Tragedy in the Making (Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute, 1995).
11. See Timothy E. Josling, Stefan Tangermann and T.K. Warley, Agriculture in the GATT (London: St Martin's, 1996), for a thorough discussion of the difficulties encountered over the years in integrating agriculture into the GATT.
12. Tumlir, as note 8 above, at 11.
13. See WTO documents WT/COMTD/W/77/Rev.1, and its addenda 1-4, prepared for the Trade and Development Committee's current review of special and differential treatment, which include descriptions of the various provisions and analysis of their utilization.
14. Ministers instructed the Committee "to identify those special and differential treatment provisions that are already mandatory in nature and those that are non-binding in character, to consider the legal and practical implications for developed and developing Members of converting special and differential treatment measures into mandatory provisions, to identify those that Members consider should be made mandatory, and to report to the General Council with clear recommendations for a decision by July 2002." Para. 12.1(i), Ministerial Statement "Implementation-related issues and concerns", WT/MIN(01)/17 of 20 November 2001, accessed at .
15. Oxfam, Rigged Rules and Double Standards: Trade Liberalization and the Fight Against Poverty (London: Oxfam, 2002), accessed at .
16. Recent research demonstrates that the gap is, in fact, shrinking. In an important new book, Indian economist Surjit Bhalla demonstrates conclusively that: "it does not matter what index is chosen for poor countries: income growth, consumption growth, inequality change, health standards, educational attainment, or poverty decline. The past 20 years were a golden period for poor people." Imagine There's No Country: Poverty, Inequality, and Growth in the Era of Globalization (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 2002), p. 200.
17. See also David Dollar and Aart Kraay, "Spreading the Wealth", Foreign Affairs (January-February 2002);
18. Xavier Sala-I-Martin, "The Disturbing 'Rise' of Global Income Inequality", NBER Working Paper No. 8904, and Xavier Sala-I-Martin, "The World Distribution of Income", NBER Working Paper No. 8933.
19. The levelling impulse is, of course, ubiquitous among populist critics of the trade regime, based on the notion that if someone is getting ahead, government needs to take steps either to rein in the front runner or subsidize the laggards. This approach appears to be more informed by moral theology than economic analysis. In our pluralist, secular societies, the perceived purveyors of moral authority are the leaders of NGOs pleading causes from human rights to environmentalism.
20. Dollar and Kraay, as note 15 above.
21. J. Michael Finger and L. Alan Winters, "What Can the WTO do for Developing Countries", in Anne O. Krueger (ed.), The WTO as an International Organization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), table 14.2, p. 370.
22. World Bank, Global Economic Prospects and the Developing Countries, 2002: Making Trade Work for the World's Poor, cited in a US paper submitted to the WTO's Trade and Development Committee, TN/CTD/W/9 of 28 June 2002.
23. Bernard Hoekman, "Strengthening the Global Trade Architecture for Development", World Bank Discussion Paper.
24. See M. Hart, The WTO and the Political Economy of Globalization, 31 J.W.T. 5 (October 1997);
25. and B. Dymond and M. Hart, Post-Modern Trade Policy: Reflections on the Challenges to Multilateral Trade Negotiations After Seattle, 34 J.W.T. 3 (June 2000).
26. Osakwe notes that "the success of liberalizing trade to integrate economies into the world economy depends not only on trade policies but also on a host of companion policies. A trade liberalisation attempt without appropriate companion policies is unlikely to succeed. Studies of trade liberalisation done since the 1980s, show that trade liberalisation has failed in many instances due to lack of appropriate companion policies rather than due to the faulty design of trade policies themselves." See "'Mainstreaming' Trade in Development Strategy", at .
27. WTO document TN/CTD/W/9 of 28 June 2002, paras 3, 10.
28. WTO document TN/CTD/W/4 of 24 May 2002, para. II:1.
29. See WTO document TN/CTD/W/3/Rev. 1 of 24 June 2002.
30. John H. Jackson, The World Trading System: Law and Policy of International Economic Relations (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), p. 275.