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Inside Out | Trade reforms swept under the carpet as WTO meeting achieves little
- Not much was expected of the thousands of trade officials gathered in the UAE for the ministerial conference, and they delivered just that
- At a time when pressure for reform and the need for global cooperation are mounting, the WTO is still struggling to get out of its own way
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Have you noticed the deafening silence on trade following last week’s long-awaited World Trade Organization ministerial conference (MC13) in Abu Dhabi? No, I thought not.
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It seems the nearly 4,000 trade officials gathered together by UAE Trade Minister Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi failed to find agreement on anything of substance. Instead, they lifted the carpet and discretely brushed all hoped-for reforms under it. Nothing resembling global trade liberalisation in any form can be expected any time soon.
Given the fractious state of multilateral cooperation, with wars raging in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, tensions continuing to simmer between the United States and China, and an unprecedented concentration of national elections this year, expectations of exciting progress from MC13 were never high.
But the frustrating, mind-numbing banality of proceedings in Abu Dhabi seemed to surprise even the most enthusiastic trade policy wonks. One must question the millions of dollars spent on flying so many senior people so far to achieve so little.
Conceding that no material liberalisations were achieved, the World Trade Organization (WTO) did its best to put on a brave face, noting that trade ministers had “agreed to continue negotiations in all areas where convergence was elusive at MC13”.
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Some might suggest it was an achievement in its own right to emerge from the meeting without significant backsliding. Others might celebrate that attendees even managed to agree on a meagre outcome document that succeeded in securing members’ explicit commitment to multilateralism.
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