WTO accessions

The world economy is showing signs of recovery after several years of lacklustre performance, although major policy uncertainties may easily upset this fragile trend. To jumpstart economies and trade after the financial crisis of 2008–9, governments across the world employed a traditional mix of fiscal, monetary and structural policies. These efforts helped to prevent a deeper crisis but fell short of pulling the world out of a period of stagnation in Read More

A country’s bid for WTO membership can promote a feeling of challenge and uncertainty among members of the private sector as the long-established methods of conducting business are susceptible to undergoing considerable change. In order to overcome the potential resistance to this change, acceding governments have responded to the concerns of their businesses by adopting strategies to raise awareness of the long-term benefits of reform d Read More

This chapter considers political, commercial and legal aspects of accession negotiations and the compromises by all parties involved to make accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) a reality. Using the negotiations on the accessions of the Russian Federation and Samoa as case studies, this chapter analyses how political constraints, economic interests and legal commitments affected the course of the negotiations. In the case of the Russian F Read More

WTO membership has long been an integral part of the overall strategic objectives of Afghanistan. For a post-conflict, landlocked and least-developed economy, joining the WTO was perceived as an opportunity to achieve economic stability, improve regional security and cooperation, alleviate poverty and achieve peace. Afghanistan has been on an eleven-year journey to integrate into the multilateral trading system. Its WTO accession process, desc Read More

This chapter looks at the relationship between the WTO accession process and structural reforms in developing countries. It finds that developing economies that are in the process of acceding to the WTO commit to more policy reforms (proxied by prior actions in the context of the World Bank’s development policy lending) than developing countries that are already members of the WTO or that have not applied to become members. It also finds that, fo Read More

China achieved a great leap forward in its economic development in the last thirty years, supported by profound trade policy reforms, significant infrastructure investment and utilization of foreign capital, under the overarching state policy of reform and opening-up. Shares of manufactures and services in production have kept increasing, and remarkable export performance has been scored during this period. Additions of labour and capit Read More

WTO accession still holds a magnetic attraction for non-members. Why is this so, in spite of the challenges faced by the organisation, conclusions by analysts of deadlock in the Doha Development Agenda, assessments that trade policy action has shifted elsewhere to preferential trade arrangements (bilateral and regional trade agreements, including more recently, ‘mega-regionals’) and repeated forecasts about the WTO’s ‘irrelevance’ and ‘unravelling’? Sy Read More

This chapter explains how accession negotiations have helped to further the agricultural reform process by upgrading and deepening the existing multilateral rules on trade in agriculture. It provides a broad overview of the existing multilateral disciplines in the area of agriculture, as contained in the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA). Using the experience of the thirty-six concluded accessions, the chapter suggests that a number of commitments, such as exte Read More

What specific obligations on transparency and notifications have been negotiated as part of the terms of accession to the WTO since 1995? What patterns and trends have emerged with regard to transparency and notification requirements in WTO accessions over time? What is the implementation behaviour on notification requirements of the states or separate customs territories that have negotiated their terms of accession, pursuant to Article XII of the Read More

Montenegro’s path to becoming a member of the WTO began in 1966, when the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia became party to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). However, pursuant to the constitution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in 1992, its application to continue as part of the GATT was not accepted. In 2000, the FRY re-started the process of accession to the WTO, aware that WTO membership would incre Read More

The negotiations on the accession of Kazakhstan to the World Trade Organization (WTO), concluded in 2015, were unique in the history of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the WTO. This uniqueness was reflected in: (i) the complexity of the accession due to its technical substance and geopolitical aspects; (ii) the significant expansion of market access achieved in the process, which is unusual in multilateral negotiations; (iii) the re Read More

Seychelles became a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2015 after an accession process that took almost twenty years to complete. Since the relaunch of its accession process in 2009, Seychelles has undertaken significant trade reforms as part of a broader economic modernization agenda. These trade reforms were anchored on the reform commitments taken by the government as part of accession to the WTO. Although it is still too Read More

Trade negotiations and the exchange of concessions on trade in goods have been the cornerstone of the multilateral trading system. This chapter examines the salient features, results and meaning of the schedules of tariff concessions and commitments on goods of Article XII members: what they mean and what they have contributed. We find that the bilateral market access of Article XII members has shaped the landscape of tariff commitments that provi Read More

Geographical indications are signs used to identify the origin of goods characterized by a given quality or reputation that is essentially linked to their geographical origin. They preserve traditional knowledge, foster the growth of local production and satisfy the needs of increasingly quality-conscious and demanding global consumers. Governments acceding to the World Trade Organization (WTO) have reformed their rules on geographical indicatio Read More

Trade liberalization has been a key component of economic development and transformation in the global economy since the middle of the last century and is a leading force in fostering globalization and connectivity in the twenty-first century. Trade reform has been on the agenda of African economies, first under the IMF-supported structural adjustment programmes of the 1980s and the early 1990s, and subsequently pursued within the multilateral le Read More

Since 1947, effective levels of average tariff protection have declined, as regulatory protectionism – behind the border – has risen. To a large extent, the greater gains from continued trade opening lie in the area of procompetitive domestic regulatory reform, codified in duly enacted legislation with associated implementing regulations. In the practice of WTO accession negotiations, specific obligations have focused more on regulatory areas of the foreig Read More

As the WTO celebrates its twentieth year, it is appropriate to ask what WTO accessions have contributed to the rules-based multilateral trading system. What demands have been made by the original and incumbent WTO members on acceding governments? How have the acceding governments fared? This chapter finds that WTO accessions have expanded the reach of the trading system, not only geographically but conceptually, by clarifying disciplin Read More

This chapter examines rule-making in the WTO. It explains the legal provisions governing how rules are made in the WTO, and describes WTO rule-making in practice, including through the adoption of decisions by the Ministerial Conference and the General Council and by way of dispute settlement. The role of consensus and voting in WTO rulemaking are discussed. The chapter also refers to different types of rules and decisions – such as ministerial decl Read More

On 14 July 2016, Liberia joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) as its 163rd member. Liberia’s accession negotiations were done in 804 days since the appointment of the Chief Negotiator after stalling for over 6 years and 10 months since Liberia first applied for Accession. This unprecedented efficiency was made possible by a combination of factors. First, Liberia’s determination at the highest political level allowed it to conduct accession negotiations Read More

China is among the Article XII members which joined the WTO after its establishment in 1995. Membership of the WTO has served as a major stabiliser and strong accelerator for China’s economic take-off, although China’s accession commitments were highly demanding. One of the most profound impacts brought about by China’s accession has been that the country fully embraced the rules-based spirit upheld by the WTO. Concepts such as non-disc Read More

The African Union’s (AU) priorities at the WTO reflect the priorities of the WTO’s African member states that the multilateral trading system should contribute to the economic development of their economies through the elaboration of equitable, fair and development-friendly rules. The position of the AU is consistent with the recently adopted United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which also see trade as being critical to achieving the Read More

The Great Recession of 2008–2009 tested the resilience of economies across the world and placed enormous strain on the frameworks underpinning global cooperation. In no arena was the test more severe than in world trade, which, against a background of collapsing output and surging unemployment in the industrialised countries, fell about one-quarter in the first half of 2009, a rate of decline that exceeded the worst years of the Great Depression of Read More