Trade monitoring
Overview
The overall objective of the WTO is to help its members use trade as a means to raise living standards create jobs and improve people’s lives. The WTO operates the global system of trade rules and helps developing economies build their trade capacity. It also provides a forum for its members to negotiate trade agreements and to resolve the trade problems they face with each other.
What we stand for
Simple fundamental principles form the foundations of the multilateral trading system. These principles have lain at the core of all WTO activities since its creation in 1995.
Who we are
The WTO is run by its member governments. All major decisions are made by the membership as a whole either by ministers (who meet at least once every two years) or by their ambassadors or delegates (who meet regularly at the WTO’s headquarters in Geneva). Decisions are normally taken by consensus. The WTO Secretariat coordinates the activities of the WTO.
What we do
The WTO operates the global system of trade rules guaranteeing WTO member governments important trade rights.
Women’s Economic Empowerment
Aid for Trade supports developing and least-developed countries in building their trade capacity and in increasing their exports by turning market access opportunities into market presence. It does so by addressing four key areas: trade policy & regulations; economic infrastructure; building productive capacity; and trade-related adjustment.
The Treatment of Medical Products in Regional Trade Agreements
The WTO Secretariat has published a new report on the treatment of medical products in regional trade agreements (RTAs) amid current supply shortages caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The report examines the extent medical products are traded among preferential partners and the difference in liberalization rates within and outside these trade agreements.
Export Quality in Advanced and Developing Economies
This paper develops new estimates of export quality far more extensive than previous efforts covering 178 countries and hundreds of products during the period 1962—2010. It finds that quality upgrading is particularly rapid during the early stages of development with the process largely completed as a country reaches upper middle-income status. There is significant cross-country heterogeneity in the growth rate of quality. Within any given product line quality converges over time to the world frontier. Institutional quality liberal trade policies FDI inflows and human capital all promote quality upgrading although their impact varies across sectors. The results suggest that reducing barriers to entry into new sectors can allow economies to benefit from rapid quality convergence over time.
WTO Trade Monitoring Ten Years on Lessons Learned and Challenges Ahead
A decade has passed since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008. Less than a month after the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers an internal Secretariat Task Force was established by the WTO Director-General to monitor the trade related developments associated with the global financial crisis.
Trade Imbalances and Multilateral Trade Cooperation
Rising current account and merchandise trade imbalances marked the years before the global financial and economic crisis. These imbalances either contributed to or precipitated the crisis and to the extent that they create systemic risks it is desirable that they be reduced. There are many factors related to macroeconomic structural exchange rate and financial policies that contributed to the imbalances. The inability to manage these issues at the international level reflects the “coherence gap” in global governance. This paper examines the contribution that the WTO can make in its three areas of activities — negotiations rule-making and dispute settlement — to deal with trade imbalances and with the main factors leading to them including exchange rate misalignments. First market opening efforts in services including in the area of financial services can reduce policy-related distortions and market imperfections in surplus countries that lead to the build-up of unsustainable imbalances. Second in the context of a broad international effort to coordinate macroeconomic exchange rate and structural policies to deal with the roots of imbalances (the first-best solution) there is a general efficiency argument that could be made for the use of WTO-triggered trade actions to enforce cooperative behaviour towards rebalancing. Absent this first-best response trade rules alone would not provide an efficient instrument to compensate for the weaknesses in international co-operation in macroeconomic exchange rate and structural policies.
The WTO's TPR Coverage of SPS Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa
The main purpose of the paper is to present the coverage of SPS systems in SSA countries by TPR reports and their main findings. It also opens the discussion as to whether the SPS analytical framework in TPR reports has been sufficiently comprehensive and beneficial in guiding technical assistance (TPR follow-up) activities in SSA. At the outset we briefly present the strategic importance of agriculture in SSA countries with a description of the link between an effective SPS regulatory system and the performance of agriculture.
Lessons Learned and Challenges Ahead for the WTO Trade Monitoring Exercise
A little over a decade has passed since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008. Shortly after the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank an internal Secretariat Task Force was established by the WTO Director-General to monitor the trade-related developments associated with the crisis. Meeting in London in early 2009 the G20 Leaders mandated the WTO together with other international bodies to monitor and report publicly on G20 adherence to resisting protectionism and promoting global trade and investment. Since then 22 G20 reports and 24 WTO-wide reports have been published.