The conclusion of the WTO Agreement will improve market access and reinforce the multilateral trade system.
CNN: ASHIMOTO RYUTARO IS THE TOUGH GUY OF JAPANESE TRADE TALKS.
At Seattle itself, the Americans still talk of launching a new round of multilateral trade negotiations.
The stalling of multilateral trade liberalisation will doubtless give a new impetus to regional and bilateral efforts.
In addition, the Doha round of multilateral trade talks is all but dead.
With the Doha Round of multilateral trade talks moribund, this decision could shape the future of the world trading system.
The benefits of a multilateral trade deal are vastly superior to those of a patchwork of bilateral and regional agreements.
More important, the future of the now-stalled Doha round of multilateral trade talks is essentially dependent on Congress' renewal of fast-track.
Multilateral trade talks are the only way to tear these barriers down.
What, then, remains of East Asia's longstanding commitment to multilateral trade negotiations, embodied in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and its forebears?
Support for LDCs should also include implementation of their fast-track accession to the World Trade Organization and their participation in multilateral trade negotiations.
The fraying tempers do not augur well for the faint hope that still exists of launching a new round of multilateral trade talks this year.
Moreover, after a major breakdown in multilateral trade talks in Germany earlier this month, the stalled Doha Round of trade negotiations looks all but dead.
Such subsidies have a long and ignoble history, but today reducing them is more urgent than ever, for they threaten the chance of any further progress in multilateral trade negotiations.
He repeated this point in his confirmation hearings and plans to work with Pascal Lamy, a long-time friend and Europe's trade commissioner, to build momentum for the new round of multilateral trade talks.
These issues include the state of the global economy, implementing the framework agreement for strong, sustainable and balanced growth, facilitating job creation, reforming the currency and financial regulation and supervision systems, stability on global energy markets, stimulating international development, strengthening multilateral trade, and countering corruption.
We have offered to support observer status for the Soviet Union in the structures created by the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade after the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations is completed, and I personally urged Chairman Gorbachev to use the intervening time to move more rapidly towards market practices in the Soviet economy.
They have flourished, in part, because of the failure of the multilateral Doha trade round, which was launched back in 2001 and is going nowhere slowly.
The correct response would be for presidents hereinafter to abandon the role of export-salesman, to concentrate trade-policy efforts on bringing China into the multilateral forum of the World Trade Organisation, and to press for tighter campaign-finance rules.
Governments agreed to be bound by multilateral rules in order to free trade internationally, but retained the right to set their own policies domestically.
Those who urge that a global World Trade Organization agreement is preferable to a series of bilateral and multilateral pacts ignore the WTO's very limited progress towards creating global free trade.
In Washington, support is growing for rewarding countries supportive of America's military policies with bilateral trade deals instead of pursuing multilateral agreements.
Competition policy was already on the trade agenda in 1948, when the multilateral trading system was set up.
Some noteworthy ideas are already being explored, such as multilateral guarantees for Indonesian letters of credit to keep trade going.
This recognises the importance of such regional trade initiatives and their potential to promote further trade liberalisation, while strengthening the primacy of the multilateral trading system.
The multilateral trading system recognises that governments have legitimate aims other than free trade.
As a result, there seems little hope of multilateral sanctions comparable to the longstanding American ones on oil purchases and other trade with Iran.
But it remains to be seen whether these country-to-country trade links will serve as building blocks or as substitutes for a wider, multilateral agreement.
The Obama administration remains committed to the multilateral trading system and is leading the way in seeking achievable market-opening approaches on trade facilitation, services and information technology.
WSJ: Tom Donilon: The President's Free-Trade Path to Prosperity
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