The World Trade Organization must focus on maintaining its unity
as it reviews the progress made in negotiations initiated in 2001,
said Sergio Marchi, the Canadian ambassador to the WTO in a speech
Thursday at the Anderson School at UCLA.
Presented by the Center for International Business Education and
Research and arranged through the Canadian consulate,
Marchi’s speech was hosted to give students a chance to meet
the ambassador in an informal, intimate setting, said Jim Aggen,
CIBER’s managing director.
Initiated in 2001 in Doha, Qatar, the WTO negotiations focus on
trade-related issues including agriculture, services and
intellectual property. The deadline for the agriculture
negotiations is January 2005.
A Cancun ministerial conference in September will assess the
progress of negotiations; and one challenge the WTO faces is
maintaining a reasonable pace of progress without neglecting the
quality of negotiations reached.
“We don’t want time to become the enemy of
ambition,” Marchi said. “It’s very seductive to
start thinking of Plan B … but we’re going to be living
with these agreements for many, many years to come, which means we
should think carefully.”
WTO decisions take a long time to make, Marchi said, because the
competing interests of all 146 member nations must be addressed by
the organization that operates on consensus.
Most noticeable are the clashing interests of developed
countries and developing countries in the WTO, Marchi said.
Decision-making becomes difficult when one group believes its
interests are not being considered.
“As we go to Cancun, developing countries ask, “˜Did
you really mean business on the development? If you haven’t
moved on our issues of development, why should we move on your new
issues?'” Marchi said.
The reconstruction of both Iraq and the world community after
the war further divides WTO member nations, Marchi said.
After the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the WTO
remained unified during the conference that led to the current
round of negotiations, Marchi said.
“We are now … not only reconstructing Iraq, but
reconstructing our faith in multilateral support,” he said.
“I would argue that leaders should invest in the WTO, in the
Doha agenda as a tangible manifestation of our commitment to a
pragmatic multilateralism.”
Though governments of member nations play a role in informing
their citizens about the benefits of free trade, Marchi said the
WTO as an organization has done a poor job of conveying its
perspective to the people it serves.
“One of my biggest pet peeves is that we communicate so
miserably ““ sometimes we deserve to be beaten up the way we
do,” he said. “And if people feel like they’re on
the outside looking in, (they’re) always going to expect the
worst. Why shouldn’t they?”
Cesare Fracassi, a first-year MBA student who attended the
event, said the WTO should emphasize the benefits of free trade to
ease people’s fears of globalization.
He suggested making an effort to show developing countries that
the WTO is not an institution that promotes only the agendas of
developed nations.
Muli Amri, an urban planning student in UCLA’s graduate
program, said he attended the event to get a broader understanding
of the WTO.
“I’ve always been interested in the WTO but
I’ve never been diligent enough to do my own research, and
this relates to questions that are happening now,” Amri
said.