Washington, EU,
1 de octubre del 2012.- En un discurso pronunciado
en el marco del diálogo entablado en la institución Brookings en Washington
D.C. el 1° de octubre de 2012, el Director General, Pascal Lamy, dijo que “los
desafíos del futuro no serán menos complejos ni menos arduos que los que se nos
plantean en la actualidad. De hecho, hay sobrados motivos para pensar que,
debido a las condiciones económicas, ambientales y sociales que hemos creado hoy,
resultará aún más difícil hacer frente a esos desafíos”. El Director General
dijo lo siguiente:
“Trazar un camino para el comercio en un
futuro incierto”
(de momento sólo en inglés)
Thanks a
lot Bill and thanks to Kemal for your kind words,
The one
thing we can say for sure about the future is that it will differ from the
present. History has been a good guide to the future and the recent past has
brought so many startling changes that the future certainly promises more of
the unexpected.
In the last
decade alone, China has risen to become the world’s second largest economic
power and its biggest exporter of goods. The Arab Spring has swept away long
established regimes, with consequences still to be determined.
The global
economy has been shaken by a series of cataclysmic events which may have been
foretold but for which we were certainly not prepared. US and Japanese debt
levels have risen to unprecedented levels. Europe’s experiment in generating
serious supranational governance is being severely tested.
Sceptics
and optimists alike have been surprised to see important Millennium Development
Goals — like halving the global rate of extreme poverty, or slashing by half
the proportion of people without access to clean water — achieved five years
ahead of the 2015 deadline.
The way we
talk to each other is nothing like what it was even 20 years ago. Human
interaction has been transformed by social networks, applications software, the
mobile telephone and the iPad.
And who
could possibly have imagined even two or three years ago that a baseball team
from Washington, D.C. would be within striking distance of the World Series for
the first time since 1924 when Calvin Coolidge was president.
What is
true for geopolitics, for technology and even for baseball is true as well for
trade.
Advances in
technology and transportation have slashed the expense and uncertainty of
distance. The rapid growth of global value chains, the rising use of
regulatory-based, non-tariff measures and the shift in trade patterns as
South-South trade grows rapidly have transformed trade in the last decade and I
believe these activities will continue to expand in the years ahead.
Trade as a
share of global GDP has risen from roughly 40% in 1980 to around 60% today. In
the United States, a country long considered less dependent on trade than many
others, the share has risen from 10% to 25% over the same period of time. US exports of goods and services in the last
10 years have more than doubled to over $2 trillion. One reason for this
dramatic expansion is that US exporters have entered new markets in a big way.
When China entered the WTO in 2001, US exports to the Middle Kingdom were $20
billion. By 2011 they had increased more than five-fold to over $100 billion.
In addition
to China, many new trading powers have emerged — Brazil, India, Mexico and
Malaysia are all in the top 25 leading exporters table, and all posted export
growth of 15% or better in 2011. Today, developing countries’ share of trade is
about 50% compared with a global share of around one-third in 2008.
Probably
more important, the nature of trade has also changed. High-tech products used
to be made in the US, Japan or Germany. Today they are made in the world, with
components and parts fabricated in many countries. The country where the final
assembly takes place may contribute only a small fraction of the final value of
the product.
Today,
nearly 60% of the volume of world merchandise trade is trade in components. In
Asia the figure is closer to two-thirds. The import content of the average
export is 40%, up from 20% two decades ago.
These value
chains have not only changed the way companies trade, they are changing the
very nature of the trade debate. When products were made in a single country by
a single company the argument that exports were good and imports bad was more
easily defended. This mercantilist approach was, for centuries, a driving force
in trade policy, as was the concept of reciprocity.
But global
value chains have turned all of this on its head. Companies wishing to be
globally competitive in a fierce marketplace need access to the best possible
inputs — goods and services — at the lowest possible prices. Hindering
companies from seeking such imports only renders them less competitive
globally. It is self-defeating. This fact, together with strict monitoring by
the WTO, explains why governments have largely resisted the wide scale
application of trade restrictive measures on imports.
Not
everyone has fully understood this important shift, but the debate is evolving,
starting with the way we measure trade.
If we were
to measure trade in value-added rather than gross statistical terms, bilateral
trade balances would look very different. True, the iPhone is assembled in
China, but the goods and services leading up to the final assembly came from 15
different companies in many different countries. The value added to the iPhone
in China is around 4%, far less than the value added in the United States,
Japan, Germany and South Korea. Yet when a $400 iPhone is sold in the United
States, standard trade accounting lists it as $400 credit to China’s side of
the ledger and $400 debit for the United States. WTO economists believe that
China’s $295 billion trade surplus with the United States would be reduced by
nearly half if two-way trade were measured in value added terms. Given the
tremendous importance of this bilateral relationship for both countries, and
for the rest of the world, I believe looking a bit more closely at the numbers
makes sense.
The broader
trend to more use of global supply chains is likely to grow, as will
competition to host production. The cost of labour is by no means the only
variable companies consider when deciding where to manufacture or source their
components. Sound domestic policies, good education, adequate social services,
and quality infrastructure are critical elements in determining where foreign
direct investment will flow in the future.
This
explains why many companies building everything from aircraft and automobiles
to furniture and padlocks have increased investment in US-based production
facilities. I don’t wish to enter into the “off-shoring/on-shoring” polemic
that I know is rather heated in this country. But the point is that companies
from around the world continue to invest billions of dollars in bricks and
mortar in the United States.
One often
overlooked area of policy which has a growing impact on competitiveness as
global value chains disseminate production is customs procedures. The longer a
producer has to wait for the needed imported component, the less competitive
she or he becomes. Trade facilitation also happens to be one area of
international rule making where we may be able to reach a WTO deal. Customs
procedures, paper work and border delays today comprise roughly 10% of the
value of world trade, or around $1.4 trillion. A trade facilitation deal in the
WTO to curtail fees and paperwork, create greater transparency and reduce
obstacles to goods in transit would cut those costs in half.
In this new
world of trade, tariffs are less of a problem when doing business in foreign
markets. Tariffs have not disappeared. They remain high on certain products.
Recent increases in applied tariffs by certain WTO members have again brought
to the forefront the value of slashing tariff ceilings in the WTO.
But in the
meantime governments are implementing a variety of non-tariff measures which
impact trade flows, sometimes profoundly.
These
measures are regulatory in nature and are aimed at protecting consumers’ health
and safety, culture or certain lifestyles. They include things like standards,
testing and certification procedures.
But
removing these types of regulations is often neither desirable nor politically
feasible. The challenge for the WTO and other multilateral organizations is
therefore not necessarily scaling back these measures but seeking to reduce the
discrepancies between them so that they do not conflict and do not
unnecessarily restrict trade — a different way of levelling the playing field.
As regional
or bilateral preferential trading arrangements multiply, the risk of disharmony
between NTMs threatens to grow. These trading arrangements may include elements
not covered by the WTO agreements such as social and environmental standards,
recognition of standards or qualifications. There is a danger that the
regulatory elements of each accord may not only differ but clash, creating
perhaps unintended but very real barriers to trade.
Global
co-operation is needed to address these measures. And yet the international
economic crisis has drained much of the political energy from the multilateral
system.
It is now
clear the goal of achieving a Doha package encompassing 20 topics among the
WTO’s 157 members is out of reach in the short term. But in this difficult
environment the possibility still exists of advancing in smaller steps.
We saw this
happening with the successful negotiations on expanding the Government
Procurement Agreement and with the deal to simplify the accession of
least-developed countries to the WTO. WTO members are negotiating the expansion
of the Information Technology Agreement, which has been a win-win deal and I am confident we will see progress here in
the coming months.
A group of
WTO members have also embarked on a plurilateral negotiation to reach a deal to
further open trade in services. Services are a key component of our economies
and a driver of the competitiveness of industries. This is why I believe
efforts should be made to negotiate in an open manner, encompassing as many WTO
members as possible and with ambition. We need as well to consider how to multilateralize
the recently struck APEC deal on environmental goods and services.
If the
WTO’s negotiating function has been disappointing, our organization has become
more effective in other areas. In monitoring and reporting on trade
developments, our role has grown through the monitoring of trade restrictive
measures since the beginning of the crisis.
The WTO’s
Dispute Settlement System continues to be the most effective mechanism of its
kind. I know that some lawyers in Washington have not always been happy with
the outcomes produced in Geneva but the fact that the United States is the most active participant in the system
indicates the degree of confidence that the US Government and US companies have
in our ability to resolve disputes effectively.
In an atmosphere
of escalating trade tensions, the Dispute Settlement Mechanism has taken the
heat out of disputes through a process which is rules-based, predictable and
respected. It is no accident that we have already had nearly three times as
many cases filed this year as in all of 2011.
In other
ways too, the WTO has become more effective. Our coherence work with the United
Nations, the Bretton Woods Institutions and regional development banks has
never been better. The Aid for Trade programme is evidence of the global
partnership to build productive capacity in developing countries. We have,
together, helped avert a shutdown in trade finance to businesses, banks and
countries in the developing world.
So what of
the future? How will the WTO adapt to the rapidly changing circumstances that
the future will inevitably bring?
To help
provide answers to these questions I have assembled a panel of 12 experts –
with the great contribution of Tom Donahue from the US Chamber of Commerce — to
report on their findings by the beginning of next year.
Of one
thing we can be certain, the role of emerging countries, in trade as elsewhere,
will continue to grow. We are in a multipolar world. Harbouring many centres of
influence lends greater legitimacy to the work of the WTO, but it also brings
greater complexity to global decision-making. A global consensus is needed on
the role of trade for growth, for development, for job creation, for poverty
alleviation.
This debate
will not succeed without political will. And it can be built. Fifty years ago
President Kennedy signed the Trade Expansion Act. October 1962 was a time of
uncertainty. The world was gripped by the Cuban Missile Crisis. The US was
looking with some perplexity at the consolidation of the European Common
Market. Yet, President Kennedy noted it was no time to stagnate behind tariff
walls, but to promote increased economic activity through increased trade.
As in 1962
we face an uncertain future, but we know it will bring unexpected events with
unpredictable consequences. There is something else we know: the challenges of
the future will be no less complex or challenging than those we face today. In
fact, there is every reason to believe that the economic, environmental and
social conditions we have created today will make those challenges even more
difficult to meet. But what is for sure is that more openness is needed,
openness of trade and openness of minds. I look forward to Brookings leading
this debate.
Thank you
for your attention.
Fuente: OMC