Oxley puts the case for non-discrimination in trade

By Alex Singleton | 6 December 2005

Alan Oxley, chairman of World Growth, and the former chairman of GATT writes a challenging paper on getting the WTO back on track. He says:

The multilateral trading system succeeds because it advances a core value. It is the idea that comparative advantage will benefit all economies. Its capacity to advance that value is under attack. Diminish the core value of any organization and you diminish its effectiveness. This value is realized in two ways - when members of the multilateral trading system trade without discrimination and when they all liberalize. There is growing clamor to allow discrimination in trade and to argue developing countries should not liberalize or only liberalize selectively...

...the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) has a rule that a member must provide the same access to its market to all trading partners. This creates a legal right to build growth on comparative advantage as members of the GATT liberalize. This is a very valuable right for developing countries. It is being diluted.