There are other threats to the multilateral trading system, which has been in place for the past seventy-five years. Regional trade agreements have challenged the non-discriminatory principles of the WTO for years now, and new anxieties about strategic competition with China have inspired measures among WTO members to decouple markets, moves that are seemingly at odds with the WTO’s goals of global economic integration. Add to the mix COVID-19 and Russia’s war in Ukraine, which have quickened the pace of these trends, and one might wonder whether the WTO stands any chance to remain relevant in coming years—or even survive.

For decades following World War II, a process of liberalizing markets, dismantling trade barriers, and extending non-discriminatory treatment globally was relentless and seemingly irreversible. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade led to the establishment of the WTO in 1995, which extended the rules and scope of the multilateral trading system to cover agriculture and textiles, intellectual property rights, trade in services, and more. Seismic geopolitical events, including the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 and China’s entry into the WTO in 2001, reinforced the global opening of markets. As Francis Fukuyama famously declared, it was the end of history, as global conflict, tyranny, and state control of markets would fade away. Unfortunately, we all know better now.

Insidious industrial policies

A recent speech by US Trade Representative Katherine Tai presents the industrial policy roadmap in clear relief. She suggested that domestic industrial policies must complement trade policies. Although she went on to reassure her audience that this approach does not mean the “global economy devolving into a kind of state of nature—where might makes right,” the implications are that common, shared global economic interests are no longer a central priority for the United States. US actions to buck WTO rules on subsidies, close off its government procurement market from foreign suppliers, and maintain high tariffs imposed by the Trump administration have led even close allies to suggest that they need to follow suit to defend their economic interests.

Some view industrial policies as an effective response to too much globalization. As Tai noted, the “need for correction is clear, and industrial policy is a part of that re-balancing effort.” However, this perspective may too casually cast aside questions about economic efficiency; the power of coddled industries to keep protections in place for years, even after their limited efficacy is demonstrated; and the reactions of ally and foe alike to put into place mirror-image measures. Even if one acknowledges a counterargument that national economic interests should prevail when other global players don’t play fair, the threat to the WTO is inescapable. When its rules, particularly the most fundamental ones, are ignored because they are deemed inconvenient, they lose their force in influencing national behavior, and the organization directly suffers in its ability to advance the global good.

Regional trade on steroids

Unlike many features of industrial policies, free trade agreements (FTAs) are specifically allowed under WTO rules. That does not mean they are fully compatible with WTO principles, especially most favored nation (MFN) treatment, which requires equal treatment for all WTO members. But the rules provide for limited exceptions for preferential tariffs under FTAs, so long as they cover “substantially all trade” between the parties. It also does not mean that FTAs pose no threat to the multilateral system. As more and more countries favor negotiation of FTAs and devote less time and fewer resources to WTO negotiations, the WTO’s stature diminishes further.

However, on the bright side, FTAs can serve as laboratories for testing new approaches to trade agreements, even in areas such as labor and the environment. Progress on fisheries subsidies in recent years in the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership and the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement inspired renewed efforts to conclude a fisheries agreement in the WTO at its 12^th Ministerial Conference in June. Good regulatory practices—which encourage greater transparency, predictability, and accountability in national regulatory measures—have been pioneered in FTAs and could be taken up soon on a broader scale in the WTO. I know from my own negotiating experience in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the WTO the tremendous impetus that FTAs can offer to rule-making in the WTO.

The most significant threat that FTAs might pose to the future credibility of the WTO is the inclination to negotiate half-baked “interim” agreements, such as the US-Japan trade agreement and Australia’s recent agreement with India, that fall far short of WTO requirements that they cover substantially all trade. The global trade landscape in recent decades has already shifted dramatically from a generally non-discriminatory one to a very preferential one in which many different levels of tariffs proliferate for the same products. This kind of approach could lead to the exception swallowing the rule in ways that fatally undermine MFN treatment—one of the WTO’s fundamental principles.

Decoupling as strategic policy

The United States and its allies, which view China as a strategic competitor that is bent on upending the existing global balance of power and related institutions, have compelling arguments for restricting commercial engagement, particularly if that engagement might feed a military buildup that threatens national security interests. However, the greater the decoupling, the greater the threat to the WTO.

After many years of hard negotiation, China joined the organization in 2001. At the time, most observers viewed accession as a critical step in China’s market-opening reform process, which would provide the economic underpinnings to a more integrated and safer world. I was then serving in Geneva, where negotiators expressed a collective relief that China’s economic behavior could be tamed by it being in the WTO. Instead, China effectively exploited gaps in WTO rules to advance its export-driven strategic interests in ways deemed unfair and dangerous to the economic and strategic interests of other countries.

At this point, it would be improbable to return to the economic landscape that existed before China’s accession. And a significant decoupling between China’s economy and those of other major WTO members would seriously strain the framework of WTO rules. While the WTO provides wide latitude for a country to deviate from WTO rules based on its interpretation of its “essential security interests,” a full abandonment of a WTO relationship between the United States and China, for example, could test the WTO to its breaking point. Earlier precedents, such as Cuba and the United States or India and Pakistan, are hardly relevant to the circumstances of the United States or the European Union and China because of their sheer size and the extent of the connections between the economies.

Headwinds ahead

These multiple threats suggest that the future for the WTO is far from assured, even if a sudden collapse or departure of a critical player is unlikely. There are opportunities to turn the tide.

Policymakers who are concerned about the implications of widespread industrial policies in major economies should call these measures out. They are short-sighted, of limited effectiveness (particularly if others respond in kind), and contrary to important WTO obligations. If they persist, the WTO’s rule of law could collapse.

FTAs will, and should, continue. They can increase trade, enhance supply-chain resilience, and cement strong strategic relationships. However, it’s best to avoid the shortcuts of interim FTAs. If they are to support, rather than undercut, the multilateral trading system, they should be generally comprehensive and not just an easy alternative to hard work in the WTO.

Finally, economic decoupling between the first and second largest economies in the world would be globally destabilizing and likely cause the eventual end of the WTO. Some disengagement is inevitable, and necessary, if the United States or European Union, for example, need to take truly justifiable actions to protect essential security interests. But the system will not be able to survive for long if the two or three largest members are ignoring the rules with respect to each other.

Slow and steady offers long-term relevance

As Assistant US Trade Representative Andrea Durkin recently noted, the WTO can “reform by doing.” Although her comments focused on the possibility of small, negotiated trade agreements, such as those concluded at the 12^th Ministerial Conference, the sentiment is relevant to countering these existential threats.

For example, it is critical that the WTO’s dispute-settlement system become fully operational again, so that industrial policies that run afoul of its rules are effectively contested. Only then might there be deterrence so that WTO members are more inclined to formulate subsidies and trade-restrictive measures that are consistent with WTO rules. This requires a resolution to the current Appellate Body crisis, in which the United States has blocked appointments to the Appellate Body because of concerns with its record of exceeding its mandate, thus preventing trade disputes from being meaningfully adjudicated in the WTO. The United States plays the most central role in finding a compromise, but others will have to do their part in preventing future Appellate Body overreach.

The WTO’s scrutiny of FTAs should be intensified, particularly to shed light on partial agreements that do not adhere to WTO requirements and potentially undermine the credibility of the organization. A healthy and complementary co-existence of FTAs and the WTO will benefit all.

Finally, the WTO should continue as a forum to discuss the implications of specific actions to decouple economies. The WTO must be more assertive in highlighting the dangerous implications to the organization and the system that has delivered economic growth for more than seven decades if major economies continue to disengage, resulting in less global trade.

For several years, there has been attention focused on the breakdown of the WTO’s negotiating function. However, if the WTO is to survive this moment and eventually thrive for the long term, its members will need to go even further to show that they value its role in curbing some of their worst instincts.

Mark Linscott is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center and the former assistant US trade representative for South and Central Asian affairs, and WTO and multilateral affairs.

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A lack of reform may lead to growing use of subsidies by developed and advanced developing countries with deep pockets in ways that ultimately widen the economic gap between countries. This is because many developing economies will not have the capacity to leverage subsidies to build their industrial bases.

For example, a recent Bloomberg report on the booming hydrogen energy sector suggested ‘a global race to stake claims in what could be a $700 billion business by 2050’ had emerged in a contest of ‘countries going against countries to lock in market share’. The EU alone is reported to be earmarking up to EUR 470 billion to ensure market leadership in the sector.

While we cannot yet assume these subsidies will be in violation of WTO rules, there is a real possibility that growing contestation for market share involving use of subsidies will benefit those who can afford to spend the most. Furthermore, while subsidies may result in cheaper imports of technology for non-subsidisers, these gains can be erased later once pricing power is established by market leaders.

This article does not offer a solution to the complex issues at hand, but engages a more humble endeavour to do two things. First, we lay out some core organizing principles which we argue should guide reform – since without agreement on core principles any negotiation process runs the risk of becoming unfocussed and unproductive; second, we identify a potential process through which reform discussions can constructively proceed.

Given the wide scope of proposed reforms that key players have placed on the table, there should be plenty of interest from the broader WTO membership. However, due to divergences in interests core principles will be required to guide reform discussions. We propose the following:

Focus reform efforts on subsidies that cause large negative cross-border spill-over effects on trading partners, since these generate the greatest political and economic tensions.
Policy space for subsidies aimed at implementing legitimate social and other policy objectives should be formalized, particularly for subsidies generating positive cross-border spill-over effects. Subsidies for infectious disease vaccines or carbon emission reduction are obvious examples here.

Allowing for certain policy space carve outs and tailored special and differential treatment for developing countries, the principle of competitive neutrality should still be central to reform, to ensure the integrity of market competition that underpins healthy economic development.

Governments should agree on a capped limit for the growth in subsidies allowed under arrangements such as the aggregate measure of support in agriculture. Also, special and differential treatment should be phased out as countries meet agreed upon development milestones, based on objective graduation criteria.
The rules should be orientated by a view that permissible subsidies are always temporary, based on regular review processes backed by predictable and enforceable phase out schedules.

Reform and clarify rules governing security exceptions to enable transparent and objective application where reasonable, and to prevent misuse when not.

Having outlined the core principles we view as appropriate for guiding a reform process we next turn to contours of a possible reform process.

First, given the oppositional nature of the policy recommendations a broader reform package will be needed to enlarge the scope for negotiating trade-offs. This would provide the basis on which a reduced but still worthwhile set of reforms could be negotiated. A potential architecture for a deal on industrial subsidies should draw on the Agreement on Agriculture’s colour-coded ‘boxes’2, corresponding to a spectrum of non-trade distorting subsidies to most trade distorting subsidies.

This would most likely focus on the ASCM, by expanding the coverage of prohibited subsidies, while re-establishing the expired permissible subsidies such as those supporting regional development, research and development, and environmental management. At the same time tighter disciplines governing the usage of countervailing duties will need to be on the table.

Second, if proposed reforms are to result in new WTO rules more players need to be brought into the process. The G20 is arguably a good starting point, as it contains the systemically important economies of both developed and developing status, and allows avoidance of the current gridlock in the WTO.

That said the goal is to establish a plurilateral process that can eventually feed into a broader WTO reform agenda. Two steps are envisaged as follows3:

The G20 should establish a subsidies reform sub-committee. This would be comprised of senior trade and finance ministry officials, as these officials have responsibilities to cover trade and industrial policy, financing of such policy, as well as the wider policy dimensions that arise with subsidies. The remit of the sub-committee needs to be multi-year and not tied to the Presidential rotation of the G20 since working through reform packages that are technically complex, as well as economically and politically sensitive, will be slow. The aim here would be to devise a plurilateral path forward that could eventually feed into a WTO reform agreement.

To stay connected to an eventual WTO reform agenda, intra-G20 meetings should be replicated in Geneva. Here G20 members based in their respective WTO delegations would have regular meetings with regard to the subsidies reform agenda. The benefits of this approach are twofold. First, it will ensure that G20 discussions are informed by broader WTO reform considerations being worked out in Geneva. Second, informal liaisons with non-G20 WTO members who are interested in subsidies reform negotiations can be engaged in an ongoing manner, with an eye towards eventual broader reforms.

In sum, we hope the above provides constructive ideas for a path towards reform for a number of key inter-related issues in the multilateral trade system that have major implications for developing countries. Furthermore, given the gridlock at the WTO it is suggested that the G20 plurilateral initiative should progress irrespective of broader WTO buy-in. Instead, willing WTO members could agree to a ‘joint statement initiative’ that could be incubated by the G20 process.

Peter is Executive Director of the Institute for International Trade in the Faculty of the Professions, University of Adelaide, Australia.

Dr Naoise McDonagh is the President of the Australian Institute of International Affairs South Australia and the Postgraduate Coordinator for the Institute for International Trade at the University of Adelaide.

To read the full commentary by the OECD, please click here.

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Drawing on a 19-year dataset of over 5,600 construction companies from 27 advanced economies and 14 emerging market economies, we use an innovative approach to measure the direct employment effect of $1 million of infrastructure spending by country income group and sector—electricity, roads, schools, hospitals, and water and sanitation. Because there is no data available for low-income developing countries, we estimate the employment impact by extrapolating from advanced economies and emerging market economies.

Our latest chart of the week shows average estimates, by sector, of the number of jobs that additional investments create along the supply chain. The amount of job creation depends on labor mobility—how easy it is to move across companies within sectors—and labor intensity—defined as the labor effects down the supply chain in a sector. For example, in an emerging market economy with high labor mobility and high labor intensity, around 35 jobs are created bodog poker review in water and sanitation per $1 million of additional investment. In a country with low labor mobility and low labor intensity, that number falls to around 8.

In advanced economies, $1 million of spending can generate an average of 3 jobs in schools and hospitals and over 6 jobs in the energy sector, assuming intermediate labor mobility and labor intensity levels. In low-income developing countries, the estimates are much larger and range from 16 jobs in roads to 30 jobs bodog poker review in water and sanitation. Put differently, each unit of public infrastructure investment creates more direct jobs in electricity in high-income countries and more jobs in water and sanitation in low-income countries.

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The impact could be higher for green investment, in part because many jobs in renewables do not require much education beyond high school and have low barriers to entry. Per $1 million invested, around 5–10 jobs could be created in green electricity, 2–12 jobs in efficient new buildings like schools and hospitals, and 5–14 in green water and sanitation through efficient agricultural pumps and recycling.

Investment in research and development can also create jobs—though mostly, if not exclusively—for high-skilled workers. Despite it being a much smaller component of public investment—mostly to government institutions and higher education—around 4 jobs are created in R&D per $1 million invested.

These results indicate that public spending on infrastructure can make a meaningful contribution to job creation. Overall, one percent of global GDP in public investment spending can create more than seven million jobs worldwide through direct employment effects alone.

Mariano Moszoro is a Senior Economist in the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department.  His work experience and research focus on public finance, political economy, and infrastructure development.  Dr. Moszoro holds a Ph.D. and habilitation (French HDR/US tenure equivalent) in Economics from the SGH Warsaw School of Economics.  In 2005-2006, he was Deputy Minister of Finance of Poland and Chairman of the state development bank BGK.  In 2009-2011, Dr. Moszoro interned as a post-doctoral fellow at UC Berkeley-Haas under Nobel laureate Oliver E. Williamson.  Dr. Moszoro has published in top journals and held academic positions at Berkeley, Harvard, GMU, and Paris.

To read the full commentary from IMF Blogs, please click here. 

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Rare earths are the key elements that make up those metals and alloys necessary for the decarbonisation process of developed economies. Once processed and refined, these 17 elements are indispensable not only for the production of industrial catalysts, but also for the permanent magnets used in the production of wind turbines and electric vehicles. Thus, rare earths play a strategic role in the development of those industrial sectors that will power the green transition of the next three or four decades.

Precisely for this reason, Chinese companies’ quasi-monopoly over the production and processing of rare earths is a fundamental, strategic dilemma for Western countries’ industrial policies. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, China accounted for no less than 62.8% of all rare earths mined globally. However, mining is only the first step of the elaborate value chain that cuts across the rare earth industry. In the downstream processing and related industrial production sectors (such as permanent magnets), Chinese companies’ shares increases up to 85-90%.

Whilst global concentration in Chinese hands has long been an accepted reality in the rare earths industry, Beijing’s inclination to weaponize this dependency has raised the alarm in all Western countries. In 2010, in the aftermath of an incident involving the Japanese coast guard and a Chinese fishing vessel in the contested waters of the Senkaku-Diaoyu islands, Beijing restricted the export of rare earths towards Japan for several months. Then, at the height of the US-China techno-commercial tensions when the Trump administration announced the Huawei ban in 2019, President Xi Jinping visited a rare earths processing plant alongside Liu He, the Chinese chief negotiator in the trade dispute with the US. In addition to the thinly veiled threat of retaliation, Xi also declared that China needed to embark on a new “Long March” in its economic confrontation against the US.

Facing the risk of overdependence on China, several Western countries have considered diversifying their supplies over the last decade, though most of them have only started making strides in the last few years. Japan was the first one in dealing with such a situation: in 2010, when Beijing partially blocked its exports, Tokyo relied on China for 90% of its imports. Also, the Chinese government’s drastic reduction of rare earths export quotas generated a strong pressure on Japanese processing and refining companies (which, at that time, dominated the sector) to relocate to China due to the induced gap between national and international commodity prices.

Over the years, Japan remained a key consumer of rare earths, yet it also managed to reduce its dependence on Chinese supplies. On the one hand, geological explorations led to the discovery of new, untapped reserves of rare earths, and the government is currently considering a reform allowing more financial support towards exploration activities. On the other hand, Japanese companies have also found alternative solutions: Honda, for instance, announced it had invented a motor that didn’t contain heavy rare earths a couple of years ago. The centrepiece in this quest, though, was the diversification of supplies. The leader in this process was JOGMEC (Japan Oil Gas and Metals National Corporation), a state-owned enterprise, which invested heavily in several resource-rich countries like Namibia and Australia in order to support an alternative network of rare earths suppliers. As of now, the share of Chinese imports has indeed declined to 58%, and Tokyo aims to push that figure below 50%.

One of the first companies JOGMEC decided to bet on was the Australian Lynas Corp. Thanks to an initial $250 mln investment carried out in partnership with Sojitz Corp in 2011 —  and with further injections of capital in the following years — Lynas currently provides a third of  Japanese demand for rare earths. It is also the only non-Chinese company with the expertise and the infrastructure necessary to operate in the downstream sector of rare earths processing. Over the last two years, Lynas has sought to expand its network of processing infrastructure: this effort has been supported by the US in its effort to build a new supply chain independent from Chinese companies. As such, the Department of Defence (DOD) allocated $30m for the construction of a processing plant in Texas last February.

This initiative underlines Washington’s growing attention towards this matter, which has become apparent in the last few years. The reopening of California’s Mountain Pass mine in 2018 – once the world’s biggest before its decline and closure in 2000 – marked the return of the US on the rare earths mining market, despite Beijing’s quasi-monopoly on processing. By the same token, the Trump administration declared rare earths as essential for national defence in 2019 and thus channelled DOD resources towards the reconstruction of a national rare earths processing capacity. From Colorado to California, new feasibility studies and pilot projects have been carried out to rebuild industrial infrastructure. Governmental support for this endeavour, albeit in new forms, has continued despite the transition: Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan envisions conspicuous funds for research and innovation as well as the development of a market for renewable energy and electric vehicles, two sectors wherein rare earths industrial processing capacity will be key.

The most evident gear-change operated by the Biden administration took place at the international level with the engagement of Indo-Pacific partners for the construction of a supply chain less reliant on China. The Quad, for instance, has provided a venue for its members – US, Japan, Australia, and India – to articulate their intention to develop a mining and refining capacity of their own. To that end, JOGMEC is considering the possibility of providing financial support to the early-stage projects currently underway in Texas and California.

Some obstacles are yet to be overcome, however. First, the rare earths industry requires specific technical knowledge and capacity to manage burdensome externalities: as a matter of fact, mining and processing entail serious risks for the local population both in terms of health and environmental degradation. Lynas’ processing plant in Malaysia, for instance, has been accused of failing to properly inform local authorities about the risks concerning the disposal of radioactive waste material derived from the production process.

Another factor is the fierce competition of big Chinese state-owned enterprises, whose production quotas were raised by almost 30% in the first semester of 2021, while Chinese exports of rare earths over the first six months of this year have surpassed pre-pandemic levels (16.5% above the first half of 2019). In addition, the issue of Chinese companies’ quasi-monopolistic market presence also applies to the integrity of Washington’s own alternative supply chain, since the international consortium that allowed the reopening of the Mountain Pass mine includes Shenghe Resources Holding, a big Chinese player in the sector.

However, the most important issue revolves around the financial sustainability of an alternative to the Chinese supply chain. Lynas, the most experienced rare earths company outside China, reported profits for only two years between 2014 and 2020, and had to be bailed out by JOGMEC in 2016. According to experts, finding a market-based solution for the creation of an alternative supply chain will prove difficult: a generous, consistent, and durable financial commitment by public authorities is indeed critical for the success of the initiative, as highlighted by the Japanese experience. However, US and Australian authorities are upgrading their commitment and have been issuing grants and funds to support the domestic development and commercialisation of processing plants, whose main beneficiary has been Lynas, with the aim of setting up complementary facilities in Kalgoorlie, Australia, and Texas.

There’s another, more important silver lining though. The green technologies market is expected to grow in parallel with the decarbonisation of the global economy: demand for rare earths should thus increase, not only in the West, but in China, too. Beijing — albeit dominant in the production market — has been the first rare earths importer since 2018, and some estimates suggest it may become a net importer at some point throughout this decade. Globally, demand is set to increase and drive up sales of existing rare earths companies. As a possible sign of this trend, Lynas reported its record quarterly revenue last month. Therefore, the global expansion in the demand for rare earths is an opportunity Indo-Pacific democracies cannot afford to pass up if they really intend to create their own supply chain independent from China.

Guido Alberto Casanova is a research assistant and editorial assistant at ISPI.

To read the full commentary from The Italian Institute for International Political Studies, please click here.

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Our excess-mortality model suggests that 8m-16m people have died in the pandemic. The central estimate is 14m. The developing world is vulnerable to the virus, especially lower-middle-income countries where remote working is rare and plenty of people are fat and old. If you strip out China, non-rich countries have 68% of the world’s population but 87% of its deaths. Only 5% of those aged over 12 are fully vaccinated.

Alongside the human cost is an economic bill, since emerging markets have less room to spend their way out of trouble. Medium-term gdp forecasts for all emerging economies are in aggregate 5% lower than before the virus struck. People are angry and, even though protesting during a pandemic is risky, violent demonstrations around the world are more common than at any time since 2008.

Rich places, such as America and Britain, are no strangers to incompetence and turmoil. But disappointment has hit emerging economies especially hard. In the early 2000s they buzzed with talk of “catch-up”: the idea that poorer countries could prosper by absorbing foreign technology, investing in manufacturing and opening up their economies to trade, as a handful of East Asian tiger economies had done a generation earlier. Wall Street coined the term brics to celebrate Brazil, Russia, India and China—the world economy’s new superstars.

For a while, catch-up worked. The proportion of countries where the level of economic output per head was growing faster than in America rose from 34% in the 1980s to 82% in the 2000s. The implications were momentous. Poverty fell. Multinational companies pivoted away from the boring old West. In geopolitics catch-up promised a new multipolar world in which power was more evenly distributed.

This golden age now looks as if it has come to a premature end. In the 2010s the share of countries catching up fell to 59%. China has defied many doomsayers and there have been quieter Asian success stories such as Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia. But Brazil and Russia have let down the brics and, as a whole, Latin America, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa are falling further behind the rich world. Even emerging Asia is catching up more slowly than it was.

Bad luck has played a part. The commodity boom of the 2000s fizzled out, global trade stagnated after the financial crisis and bouts of exchange-rate turbulence caused turmoil. But so has complacency as countries have come to think that fast growth was preordained. In many places basic services such as education and health care have been neglected. Crippling problems have been left unfixed, including South Africa’s idle power plants, India’s rotten banks and Russia’s corruption. Instead of defending liberal institutions, such as central banks and the courts, politicians have used them for their own gain.

What happens next? One risk is an emerging-market economic crisis as interest rates in America rise. Fortunately most emerging economies are less brittle than they were, because they have floating exchange rates and rely less on foreign-currency debt. Long-running political crises are a bigger worry. Research suggests that protests suppress the economy, which leads to further discontent—and that the effect is more marked in emerging markets.

Even if emerging economies avoid chaos, the legacy of covid-19 and rising protectionism could condemn them to a long period of slower growth. Many of their people will remain unvaccinated until well into 2022. Long-term productivity could be lowered as a result of so many children having missed school.

Trade may also become harder. China is turning inward, away from the broadly open policies that made it richer. If that continues, China will never be the vast source of consumer demand for the poor world that America has been for China in recent decades.

The West’s increasing protectionism will also limit export opportunities for foreign producers which, in any case, will be less advantageous as manufacturing becomes less labour-intensive. Unfortunately, rich countries are unlikely to make up for it by liberalising trade in services, which would open up other paths to growth. And they may fail to help exposed economies such as Bangladesh—a success story—adapt to climate change.

Faced with this grim landscape, emerging markets may themselves be tempted to abandon open trade and investment. That would be a grave error. An unforgiving global environment makes it even more important for them to stick to policies that work. Turkey’s notion that raising interest rates causes inflation has been disastrous; Venezuela’s pursuit of socialism has been ruinous; and banning foreign firms from adding customers, as India just has with Mastercard, is self-defeating. When catching up is hard, those emerging markets which stay open will have the best chance.

Catch up, don’t give up

Some rules have changed: universal access to digital technologies is now vital, as is an adequate social safety-net. But the principles of how to get rich remain the same today as they ever were. Stay open to trade, compete in global markets and invest in infrastructure and education. Before the liberal reforms of recent decades, economies were diverging. There is time yet to avoid a return to the needless hardship of old.

To read the full commentary from The Economist, please click here. 

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Today is the 175th anniversary of the repeal of the Corn Laws, after years of controversy and suffering under its effects. The story is especially relevant now, when international trade is under threat. There is much to be learned from how the punishing tariffs were removed and the economy pried open.

The Corn Laws came into effect in 1815, inspired by the landed aristocracy. It was in their interest to keep cheap grain from overseas out of the British market and thereby maintain high domestic prices. A complex sliding scale of duties boosted prices on imported grain. This padded the incomes of the wealthy few who owned grain-producing land—paid for by the public, many of whom were impoverished and desperate to stretch their meagre shilling and pound earnings.

The policy intensified social conflict. It also held back Britain’s industrialisation by keeping land, labour and capital devoted to agricultural pursuits rather than seeing them allocated to more productive uses in the manufacturing and services sectors. Instead of benefiting from trade and importing cheap food through exports of expensive textiles, the Corn Laws restricted trade and undermined economic efficiency.

The political explanation for the regressive economic policy is straightforward: Parliament was dominated by the landed gentry, who simply equated the national interest with their personal fortunes. In the wake of the Napoleonic wars, they also justified the Corn Laws on the grounds of national security, as necessary to ensure a stable domestic supply of food. Meanwhile, the poor and aspiring middle classes were excluded from politics, unable to hold office or even vote.

By the late 1830s pressure to repeal the law mounted. The tariff on grain reached more than 80% in 1835. Four years later the Anti-Corn Law League was formed, which publicised the cause through rallies, pamphlets and savvy political organisation. Repeal, the League’s supporters argued, was not just economically justified but morally right.

Momentum for repeal gained significant traction when the Irish potato famine in 1845 jeopardised British food production. Potato crops in both countries had been hit. Imports became necessary to prevent the starvation that devastated Ireland from happening in Britain as well. The pressure was on the Conservative prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, to act. On June 25th 1846 the House of Lords voted to repeal them. It was so controversial that it split the Conservative Party and weakened it for decades.

The lower tariffs opened the way for American and European grain, notably from France and Prussia, bodog online casino to enter the market, reducing prices and alleviating food shortages. Yet on purely static economic grounds, the short-run effects were modest. Landowners lost roughly 4-5% of their income while labour and capital-owners saw their incomes rise about 1%, according to a forthcoming paper in the Economic Journal. The benefits of the efficiency gains from removing the import tax were counterbalanced by lower export prices and higher import prices that diminished the gains from trade.

Yet the consequences in terms of income distribution were real. According to the paper’s economy-wide simulation of the effects of repeal, it reduced the welfare of the top 10% of income earners by about 1-2%, while it increased the welfare of the bottom 90% by about 0.5%. (Welfare includes the impact on incomes of those groups and the prices of the goods they consume.) Although this sounds small, the cumulative gains and losses over time were substantial. Free trade today is sometimes regarded as helping corporations at the expense of workers, but 175 years ago it was considered a progressive, pro-poor policy that was politically popular. As Benjamin Disraeli, who led the country in the 1870s, put it, protectionism is “not only dead but damned.”

Overseas, Britain’s decision to unilaterally open its market led other countries to move toward freer trade. The events were carefully watched in America. Aware that Britain was opening its market to American and other foreign grain led Congress to dramatically lower tariffs on British manufactured goods in 1846. After Britain signed the Cobden-Chevalier treaty in 1860, which reduced duties on bilateral trade, other European countries sought similar pacts, starting a wave of tariff-reducing agreements that liberalised trade.

The repeal of the Corn Laws contributed to an unleashing of entrepreneurial dynamism that fuelled economic growth, benefiting the poorest in society. Not only did the rate of growth in worker productivity rise; real wages kept better pace with this growth. Thus began a period of mid-Victorian prosperity with free-trade feted among the British public.

The end of the Corn Laws 175 years ago sheds light on the challenges facing policymakers today. Taking away special privileges from powerful groups is an eternal struggle. Just as landlords obstructed freer trade long ago, now farmers stand in the way of reform. The European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy still directs billions in subsidies, through trade barriers and cash transfers, to French, German and other European farmers. These costs reach as high as $95bn, or 0.5% of Europe’s GDP in 2020. State support to EU producers as a share of gross farm receipts has stabilised at around 19% since 2010, but that means almost 20 cents of every dollar given to farmers come from the public till.

America has its own problems. Under President Donald Trump, farm subsidies soared to more than $20bn in 2020 from around $4bn in 2017, mostly as compensation for the damage caused by his failed trade war. These subsidies go to the largest and wealthiest farmers, not the family farms politicians love to talk about. In 2019 the richest 1% of farmers received almost one-fourth of the total subsidy payments, and the top decile almost two-thirds. America’s ethanol policy—ie, subsidising corn farmers—is a travesty that remains in place because presidential candidates must go through Iowa before gaining their party’s nomination.

The story of the Corn Laws’ repeal is especially relevant today. Political leaders should take a page from the playbook of 1846 and recognise that although powerful producers loudly oppose liberalisation, free trade best promotes the interests of ordinary workers over time. The World Trade Organisation should open a new round of multilateral negotiations to reduce trade barriers, including those on agricultural goods.

Indeed the Cairns Group, a coalition of agricultural exporting countries in the Americas, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, just this week called for freer trade to respond to global food insecurity and climate change. If policymakers and the public stood up to landed interests today, it would be the perfect historical echo of Peel, the League and the importance of understanding free trade as the way by which the whole of society prospers.

Donald J. Boudreaux is a professor of economics at George Mason University and chair of its Mercatus Centre.

Douglas A. Irwin is a professor in the economics department at Dartmouth College.

To read the full commentary from The Economist, please click here.

Image from the Foundation for Economic Education 

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Economist Jagdish Bhagwati predicted that global labour mobility would be the engine of twenty-first-century growth, just as the movement of goods drove economic growth in the nineteenth century and that of capital dominated twentieth-century development^[2]. The movement of people across borders is such a potentially powerful engine for development, that were it to be liberalised further, developing country incomes would quadruple and global GDP would double^[3]. However, the political contestation around international migration has hampered its potential, earning it the epithet of “the last bastion of protectionism”^[4].

This is especially so for unskilled labour migration — relatively speaking, developed countries tend to welcome skilled migrants (albeit, to an extent) but consider unskilled workers an economic, security and cultural threat^[5]. This has unfortunately tempered the “irresistible forces” propelling migration, primarily that ageing prosperous economies require labour and poor demographically-endowed countries need to export surplus labour^[6]. India is at the centre of this debate — it is among the world’s top origin-countries for migrants, with its international migrants more than doubling over the past 25 years^[7]. It is also one of the top destinations for international migrants — in 2015, India hosted the 12th largest immigrant population globally^[8].

Migration is now recognised as a key function of sovereign diplomacy, going beyond traditional statecraft to ensuring well-governed labour migration, and the training and welfare of migrant workers^[9]. But global labour mobility today is no longer restricted to the physical migration of labour. The forces of globalisation, coupled with technological shifts, are transforming work and production structures. The dematerialisation of the world economy has contributed to the rise of “virtual migration,” a flexible, disembodied labour supply across borders — a form of “migration without migrating” — that is coming to define the new labour economy^[10]. In his book Virtual Migration: The Programming of Globalisation, A. Aneesh draws a distinction between “body-shopping” (hiring skilled workers who work for corporations overseas through sub-contracting practices) and “online programming” (skilled workers living in their home countries and working through the internet for corporations). The latter has received a fillip due to accelerating digital transformation and the shift to remote-first modes of working, engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic. With a large chunk of its workforce part of this ecosystem, India is the world’s largest digital labour supplier^[11]. This phenomenon therefore deserves a place in India’s imagination of its economic diplomacy for the future.

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The international mobility landscape is in a state of flux at present, precipitated by accelerating digital transformation and the changing contours of work, and made urgent by the COVID-19 pandemic’s tumultuous impact. This section is an exploration of evolving labour market trends that are expected to have an impact on Indian economic diplomacy’s agenda for promoting global labour mobility. 

The COVID-19 pandemic

It would be remiss to discuss global trends affecting international labour mobility without mentioning the COVID-19 pandemic — historically, one of the biggest shocks to global migration^[12]. The pandemic has prompted protectionist restrictions against the movement of people globally. Remittance flows globally declined by 6 percent year-on-year in Q2 of FY2020^[13], and are likely to fall even more sharply — the World Bank has predicted a 13 percent decline in global flows in 2020^[14], and a 23 percent decline in remittance flows to India^[15].

The pandemic’s impact on the labour market has been heterogeneous. Research suggests that migrant workers form a critical chunk of ‘essential services,’ such as healthcare and care work, that have been instrumental in fighting the pandemic across the world^[16]. In some countries like the UK and Germany, migrants have earned considerable public favour by holding up their economies as ‘essential workers’ (Germany chartered flights to bring in agricultural labour). However, others, such as the US and the Gulf (two key destinations for Indian emigrants in particular), have put up protectionist barriers that are unlikely to be relaxed in the near term^[17].

The pandemic will also likely magnify existing issues that had begun plaguing the migration economy, such as growing xenophobia and protectionism. A surge of xenophobia is already being seen in the Gulf countries, where the spread of the virus is being attributed to unskilled migrant workers and employers are being warned not to hire expatriate workers^[18]. Protectionism is also likely to rise in this context; services under mode 4 — the presence or movement of natural persons — have always been the least liberalised of all modes of labour supply (see Figure 1). The pandemic is likely to reverse some of the meagre progress made in this regard^[19]. As a service-led economy, India has long had labour mobility at the top of its trade negotiations agenda. However, there has been little appetite for mode 4 liberalisation in global trade deliberations, much to its discontent. The multilateral Trade in Services Agreement, launched in 2013 for this purpose and to which India was not a party, has also stalled^[20]. India’s service exports continue mainly via mode 1 (cross-border supply)^[21].

Figure 1: World Trade in Commercial Services by Mode of Supply, 2017

Restructuring labour markets and changing labour force requirements

The forces set into motion by the pandemic will likely cause a restructuring of labour markets. For one, the bulk outflow of migrants driven by the pandemic is unlikely to be reversed in equal proportions. Second, the threat of the transmission of infection may keep country borders closed for immigration for a considerable period, especially in developed states where vaccination will arrive first. Third, the recessions and employment crises witnessed across the world will also pressurise countries to put their citizens first, thereby hurting the cause of migration and development. Lastly, technological shifts will increase the demand for high-skilled workers more generally across the board.

The pandemic’s impact on the labour market will be heterogeneous, and it is critical to gauge where opportunities and challenges lie. The Gulf and the US have traditionally been the major destinations for Indian emigrant workers. In its May 2020 report, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimated that six million jobs will be lost in the Arab region due to COVID-19 and the oil shock^[23]. The crisis is also likely to intensify the Gulf Cooperation Council’s ‘nationalisation policies,’ instated to create jobs for locals and reduce dependence on international migration^[24]. Bahrain has already announced that jobs left vacant by migrants during the pandemic are to be filled by locals^[25]. However, nationalisation policies are unlikely to have an extreme impact on the need for migrant workers in the short term^[26]; for now, demand for migrants is expected to persist in the construction, care and hospitality sectors^[27]. The region is looking to expand its tertiary-educated talent pool by 50 percent by 2030^[28], and in the longer term, labour requirements in the Gulf are expected to gradually move towards a smaller number of migrants with superior skills. Digital transformation coupled with the climate crisis is also likely to create demand in new sectors — for instance, the energy efficiency sector is expected to be the single largest generator of new employment in the UAE and is estimated to create more than 65,000 jobs by 2030^[29].

US-India relations mostly flourished under former US President Donald Trump, except on the issue of immigration. His temporary ban on several work visa categories hurt Indian H1B-visa workers disproportionately, and stringent conditions for the H1B visas, such as prohibitively high application fees, led India to file a case against the US at the World Trade Organisation (WTO)^[30]. The restrictions are expected to be relaxed under US President Joe Biden. Biden’s campaign promises indicate that he will work to eliminate country-based quotas for high-skilled visas and exempt overseas PhD holders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics from visa caps, which is good news for India. Worryingly, however, Biden has remained conspicuously silent on the subject of the WTO and US tariffs^[31].

In addition to keeping an eye on trends in the above regions, the Indian government must also turn its attention to other key geographies that have considerable potential in this regard. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries are estimated to need 400 million additional workers by 2050 to hold up their social security systems^[32]. The UK has recently indicated that it will be open to an “unlimited number of highly-skilled Indian workers” from 2021 onwards^[33]. Promisingly, the European Union (EU) is also assessing the prospect of liberalisation of both skilled and unskilled migration. An ILO report suggested that there are higher shortages in the skilled sector in Europe — medicine and engineering being two key areas — even as requirements differ by country and must be assessed accordingly. The mobility of science and technology professionals could, therefore, be a key area for India-EU negotiations^[34]. The EU has acknowledged the pressing need for labour — and the failure of migration regimes thus far — to put in a framework for the recruitment of low-skilled workers in a way that reduces irregular and illegal migration^[35]. The Indian government must note this development, and reinvigorate efforts to work with the EU to a constructive dialogue in this area. The India-EU Declaration of Common Agenda on Migration and Mobility (2016) is a commendable step towards this goal. Future initiatives must focus on key areas of interest like student mobility and the governance and prevention of irregular migration (especially from North India to the EU, which will require the cooperation of the relevant Indian states)^[36]. Additionally, Japan has recently begun liberalising its stance on immigration in recognition of the needs of its ageing population, and foreign workers in the country have doubled since 2013. Japan has fast-tracked permanent residency for skilled workers and, importantly, also passed a law to expand the quantum of blue-collar visas and provide blue-collar workers a path to permanent residency^[37].

There has also been some speculation recently that the shift to remote, virtual work during the pandemic may provide a fillip to “virtual migration” and the possibility for skilled workers to work across borders more fluently. However, at present, the ILO estimates that only about 18 percent of workers globally are in sectors that can work effectively from home, and have access to a conducive environment and infrastructure to do so. Therefore, this phenomenon may have a more muted impact on international labour mobility than expected^[38].

The future of work

What will the restructuring of labour markets due to emerging technologies likely look like? The deployment of emerging technologies is now causing a ‘hollowing out’ of the global workforce, with middle-skill jobs beginning to vanish. It has also created a ‘skill bias’ — high-skilled labour is in greater demand and has been more resilient and fared better during the pandemic^[39]. White-collar non-routine occupations are also relatively more immune from automation, even though susceptibility to automation remains frustratingly difficult to predict and plan for^[40]. In the long-term, this skill bias is expected to cause a large-scale shift in the structure of demand for labour at the expense of developing countries’ large pools of unskilled labour.

In their book Ghost Work, Mary Gary and Siddharth Suri have pointed to a more recent phenomenon that is emblematic of the effect of digital transformation on labour markets — the rise of a near-invisible global workforce that has emerged to power the platform economy^[41]. The book refers to a virtual, high-skilled globally-distributed workforce that performs flexible, task-based work and reports to an application programming interface (API). India is at the core of this phenomenon, and is rapidly becoming the artificial intelligence (AI) backend office of the world^[42].

Gray and Suri estimate that by 2055, 60 percent of today’s global employment will have converted into ghost work^[43]. This may well happen sooner; with regular jobs disappearing during the global pandemic-induced recession, their ranks have likely been vastly inflated. The size of this workforce is currently difficult to estimate, as the nature of their work is practically invisible. While this type of work has provided opportunities in the form of flexible ‘virtual migration’ and the ability to work for employers across the world, it has also extracted a high cost. Digital blue-collar workers face the problem of plenty — supply of workers vastly exceeds demand for their services — which has squeezed their wages and bargaining power, and led to a feeling of alienation and the loss of job security and mobility. Collective action is harder for them; as the nature of their work is disintermediated, they are dispersed all over the globe and view each other as competition^[44]. The cross-border, invisible and informal nature of this work has created tremendous regulatory challenges. The role of the state must first extend to efforts towards making these labour supply chains visible, by defining platform work clearly and creating comprehensive databases for these workers. India’s Union Budget 2021 has taken a laudable step towards that end by provisioning for a minimum wage across all categories of workers, which will also be tremendously beneficial for these workers if implemented well. The role of economic diplomacy in this regard is crucial — regulation of ‘ghost work’ requires international collaboration and alignment of regulatory practices as workforces are dispersed all over the world.

Recalibrate India’s economic diplomacy

In light of the changing global outlook, it is imperative for India to recalibrate its economic diplomacy framework, to enable its advocacy for global labour mobility in the future. This section shall proceed issue-wise and attempt to come up with a broad roadmap for this purpose.

A creative and pragmatic approach

India needs to rethink its approach towards engaging in debates on the future of global labour mobility. bodog online casino India has been disappointed time and again at the WTO — most recently in 2017, when it tabled its draft negotiating text called the Trade Facilitation Agreement for Services^[45] — and regional fora such as at the recently concluded negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)^[46]. India’s decreasing manufacturing competitiveness has led it to become increasingly defensive in trade negotiations with regard to market access in areas like agriculture, retail and dairy, making it difficult for the country to bargain for greater services liberalisation, as the RCEP negotiations demonstrated. In such a situation, it is patient and creative diplomacy, rather than an offensive stance, that may enable India’s cause.

One solution is to identify bilateral opportunities for partnership rather than multilateral engagement — an idea that has already yielded dividends for India. Among the key barriers for partnerships on global mobility are a lack of trust, concerns around the economic and security-related domestic impact of migration, and (now) health risks. Therefore, while negotiating, India will need to delve into several issues, such as those related to liability for overstay, illegal migration and the enforcement of temporary guest worker rules, and offer to assume some legal responsibility for monitoring and compliance as well^[47].

India also needs to think creatively to carve out greater policy space for itself in negotiations. One solution advanced by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations is the introduction of start-up visas. This will serve to attract innovative talent to the country and also demonstrate India’s willingness to reciprocate on high-skilled labour mobility liberalisation, shifting the country’s policy stance to one more inclined to engage and compromise rather than just demand^[48]. This would also enable India’s diaspora policy, and provide a route for inviting greater diaspora participation in domestic development. While focusing on bilateral engagement, India must continue to push on the multilateral front as well, and remain engaged with the WTO and forums like RCEP, with a view to build consensus on the growing need for well-designed labour mobility channels.

Invest in a capable workforce

A domestic as well as an emigration prerogative, India needs to invest in enhancing the capabilities of its workforce. Skills requirements are not a monolith, and neither is the future of work. Skilling programmes need to address the starting points of learning, for what is a highly segmented workforce.

A workforce of the future needs to be agile and move fluently between occupations. Basic digital fluency will be critical, even as a section of the population needs to be trained in higher-order technological skills. Skill-biased technological change will create greater demand in the areas of AI, machine learning, robotics, big data and natural language processing across the board. Soft skills, meanwhile, are often underemphasised but will be critical to every profession^[49].

India’s National Education Policy has encouragingly aligned vocational education and apprenticeships with formal educational attainments^[50]. The government has done well to engage multiple agencies in migration governance for the purpose of capability-building — with the Ministry of Labour and Employment and Ministry of Skills Development and Entrepreneurship taking on key roles. However, the problem of skill mismatch remains high, as is the challenge of skill recognition across borders. Addressing this will require an integrated policy and certification framework, put into place collaboratively by sending and receiving countries^[51]. It also requires efforts towards strengthening India’s Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) programme as a priority — much of India’s workforce, contrary to popular perception, is already skilled but unrecognised and uncertified^[52][53]. Technology-based solutions can also make intermediation more transparent — online job platforms, skills verification and tests and the verification of contracts will make job matching more efficient^[54].

Capability-building will require a tailored policy. For example, to promote semi-skilled and unskilled worker migration to the EU, India — with the support of EU policymakers — must create training and certification programmes oriented towards EU standards, targeted towards sectors like hospitality, healthcare, construction and care work, which are likely to see high demand^[55].

An updated diaspora policy

Academic and policy discussions have largely tended to focus on the impact of diaspora in their host countries, relatively few studies focus on the political and economic impact on the countries of origin, due to paucity of data. India must look at this phenomenon closely as well^[56]. Unskilled migration usually has a net positive impact on the country of origin, however, skilled migration has both negative and positive effects.

The negative effect that India needs to pay particular attention to is brain-drain, which has arguably had a tangible impact on the quality of Indian universities. India has been a “net exporter of talent,”^[57] which matters for economic diplomacy as well as development, as the country’s domestic fortunes are inextricably tied to its international exercise of influence. This problem requires serious consideration. Labour mobility agreements can be designed to promote this — we can move training to the country of origin and provision for a net ‘brain gain.’ The Australia Pacific Training Coalition (ATPC), a skilling drive to meet the region’s labour requirements, provides a case study for this^[58]. The ATPC has a ‘home’ track and an ‘away’ track, and the ‘away’ track provides language, digital literacy, cultural training, RPL and other necessary work abroad training as well. Crucially, it also has a programme for investing in the return and reintegration of workers through ‘Full Circle Programmes,’ including a promising means to access platforms while away, to support their RPL applications, to know what kind of work is possible and available for returnees.

The attitude of the government towards domestic development and addressing push factors for emigrants often matters immensely for its success with diaspora engagement and reverse migration strategies^[59]. Additionally, India also needs to find more creative and deeper-rooted ways of engaging its diaspora in development initiatives. A successful policy will recognise that the diaspora is not a homogeneous category and must be seen as distinct categories — such as differentiating between non-resident Indians, and ‘older’ migrants who migrated early as distinct from recent migrants. Diaspora policies must then be tailored according to their relevance for these different groups^[60].

A large chunk of the Indian diaspora is highly skilled and diaspora organisations can therefore act as effective mentoring networks and help complement skilling initiatives^[61]. But to be effective, diaspora policy must be more welfare-oriented and empathetic in tone and content^[62]. India needs a migration policy that extends to the treatment of overseas Indian workers. The pandemic has put a spotlight on the shabby, vulnerable living conditions of migrant populations in many parts of the world. This is a failure of the international migration governance framework and further evidence of the urgent need for national economic diplomacy to address this glaring vacuum in policy^[63].

An adaptive and empathetic policy framework

The rising complexity of economic diplomacy requires bureaucracies to design their frameworks to be more adaptive, reasonably decentralised and with strong inbuilt feedback mechanisms^[64]. The necessity of feedback mechanisms is evidenced by India’s experience with migration governance in the Gulf. India-mandated minimum referral wages are facing implementation challenges, due to contract substitution in the destination country (contract substitution refers to an informal practice where foreign workers sign a contract before they migrate, but are compelled to accept a different, weaker contract on arrival in the destination country)^[65]. Indian embassies could act as feedback nodes for policy in this regard. A plurilateral approach including all stakeholders, such as employer and employee organisations, and greater inter-ministerial coordination will promote more effective governance.^[66] The need for domain expertise in India’s bureaucracy^[67], and better systems for retaining and creating institutional knowledge within ministries^[68], have often been brought up as areas of critical reform.

Adaptive policy could identify and plug the existence of policy vacuums that impede governance. One such vacuum is wage-theft, especially in the Gulf, where workers are denied their dues by companies in violation of their terms of contract. The e-Migrate platform instituted by the Indian government to coordinate across stakeholders has helped mitigate this problem and could be improved through integration with labour platforms in Gulf countries. Setting up mechanisms for Indian workers to air grievances could also help — the Indian repatriation form to be filled by migrants during COVID-19 did not provide any space for workers to discuss their grievances and seek redressal^[69].

Evidence-based adaptive policy also requires quality data. There is a need for more cross-country, comparative data sets and more data on migration flows and the enforcement of labour laws to realise the vision for a 2030-ready economic diplomacy framework for India.

There is an urgent need for Indian diplomacy to take a more welfare-oriented and rights-based approach towards emigration. India could begin by deliberating upon transitional justice mechanisms to address the immediate grievances and claims of repatriated workers due to the pandemic. India also needs to take this opportunity to push for broader reforms. The pandemic has prompted Qatar to dismantle the ‘Kafala’ system (a legal framework defining employer-employee relations, which has become increasingly exploitative)^[70] and some other Gulf countries have expanded access to free healthcare and mandated private companies to provide accommodation to migrants. Governing return migration flows will now require coordination from both sending and receiving countries, and India must take this opportunity to co-build a welfare framework for migrant workers in cooperation with Gulf governments, for mutual benefit^[71].

The rights-based framework must also extend to immigrants received by India. Indian immigrants migrate irregularly and are often unrecorded, which is why there is a paucity of literature and lack of reliable figures on immigrant migration flows^[72]. The conduct of India as a destination country is a critical component for economic diplomacy, even as it is beyond this paper’s scope.

Upcoming emigrant bill

India’s draft emigrant bill, yet to be passed by parliament, will replace the Emigration Act of 1983 as the overarching and only legal instrument responsible for dealing with emigration and migrant welfare. However, the current draft bill excludes many, such as the families of emigrant workers and irregular and undocumented migrants. This will hurt India’s bilateral and multilateral efforts towards promoting labour mobility. The bill also neglects to focus on migrant rights in their destination country and the governance of return migration^[73].

In a bulletin released in 2007, the World Health Organisation stated that “international human mobility is factorial to the globalisation of infectious and chronic diseases” and that it poses a national security threat^[74]. This is now evident. India’s draft emigrant bill makes no mention of mobility during crises and does not consider the importance of social security and health insurance for its migrants. The pandemic has demonstrated the urgency to work towards greater awareness and access to health and welfare services, and a transnational health framework that is inclusive of migrants. While including these provisions in its own legal framework, India must also work to include this request in its bilateral labour agreements^[75].

Conclusion 

Global labour mobility is a critical instrument for promoting India’s development aims, and therefore features increasingly prominently in its economic diplomacy agenda as well. This paper has put forth two broad sets of arguments. One, it has elucidated the changing global outlook for labour mobility considering the pandemic and the evolving future of work. Two, it has provided a roadmap for India to recalibrate its economic diplomacy given this shifting outlook and has provided policy recommendations towards this end.

The subject of international labour mobility has often been averse to international cooperation, with origin and destination countries taking on adversarial stances, resulting in a fragmented and reactive approach to migration. However, a collaborative framework born out of pragmatism and an understanding of changing global trends and common challenges is both possible and desirable to leverage the gains from global labour mobility mutually^[76].

Endnotes

^[1] “Global labour mobility is in India’s interest,” The Hindu, 7 May 2018.

^[2] Basant Kumar Potnuru and Vishishta Sam, “India–EU engagement and international migration: Historical perspectives, future challenges, and policy imperatives,” IIMB Management Review, 27, no. 1 (March 2015), 35–43.

^[3] “Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP): Helping Connect International Labor Markets,” Center for Global Development.

^[4] Manjula Luthria, “Three Funerals and a Wedding: Resetting the way we work on migration,” World Bank Blogs, 12 September 2013.

^[5] Lant Pritchett, Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility(Washington, D.C.: Center for Global Development, 2006).

^[6] “Labor Mobility Partnerships (LaMP)”

^[7] Phillip Connor, “India is a top source and destination for world’s migrants,” Pew Research Center, 3 March 2017.

^[8] Connor, “India is a top source and destination for world’s migrants”

^[9] Gerasimos Tsourapas and Fiona B. Adamson, “How countries use ‘migration diplomacy’ to pursue their own interests,” The Conversation, 4 February 2019.

^[10] Rina Ghose, “Virtual Migration: The Programming of Globalization. A. Aneesh,” Urban Geography 28, no. 5 (2007): 511–12.

^[11] Sangeet Jain, “Reimagining work and welfare for the Indian economy,” Observer Research Foundation, 27 October 2020.

^[12] Delphine Strauss, “Pandemic ends a decade of growth in global migration,” Financial Times, 19 October 2020.

^[13] Strauss, “Pandemic ends a decade of growth in global migration”

^[14] “World Bank Predicts Sharpest Decline of Remittances in Recent History,” World Bank, 22 April 2020.

^[15] “Remittances to India likely to decline by 23% in 2020 due to Covid-19: World Bank,” India Today, 23 April 2020.

^[16] “Labour migration at the time of COVID-19,” International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization, 16 April 2020.

^[17] Strauss, “Pandemic ends a decade of growth in global migration”

^[18] Huda Alsahi, “COVID-19 and the Intensification of the GCC Workforce Nationalization Policies,” Arab Reform Initiative, 10 November 2020.

^[19] Pralok Gupta, “There is no appetite in the world for Mode 4 commitments,” Trade Promotion Council of India, 18 July 2019.

^[20] Linda Yueh, “Economic Diplomacy in the 21st Century: Principles and Challenges,” LSE IDEAS Blog, 27 August 2020.

^[21] “Global services trade: What makes India different,” The Economic Times, 24 August 2019.

^[22] World Trade Organization, World Trade Report 2019: The Future of Services Trade, World Trade Organization, 2019.

^[23] Rejimon Kuttappan, “Indian migrant workers in Gulf countries are returning home without months of salary owed to them,” The Hindu, 19 September 2020.

^[24] Alsahi, “COVID-19 and the Intensification of the GCC Workforce Nationalization Policies”

^[25] Rhea Abraham, “Migration Governance in a Pandemic: What Can We Learn from India’s Treatment of Migrants in the Gulf?” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 55, Issue No. 32-33 (8 August 2020).

^[26] Alsahi, “COVID-19 and the Intensification of the GCC Workforce Nationalization Policies”

^[27] Froilan T. Malit, Jr and George Naufal, “Future of Work: Skills and Migration in the Middle East” (presentation, Inter-Regional Experts Forum on Skills and Migration in the South Asia-Middle East Corridor).

^[28] “The Future of Jobs and Skills in the Middle East and North Africa: Preparing the Region for the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” World Economic Forum, May 2017.

^[29] “The Future of Jobs and Skills in the Middle East and North Africa”

^[30] Gupta, “There is no appetite in the world for Mode 4 commitments”

^[31] Devirupa Mitra, “What a Biden Administration Could Do – Or Not Do – for India’s Key Priorities,” The Wire, 8 November 2020.

^[32] Rebekah Smith and Cassandra Zimmer, “The COVID-19 Pandemic Will Probably Not Mark the End of the Kafala System in the Gulf,” Center for Global Development, 28 October 2020.

^[33] “Britain has a good news for Indians who want to migrate to UK,” The Economic Times, 17 January 2019.

^[34] Potnuru and Sam, “India–EU engagement and international migration”

^[35] Stefano Bertozz ed., Opening Europe’s doors to unskilled and low-skilled workers: A practical handbook (Bureau of European Policy Advisors, 2010).

^[36] Potnuru and Sam, “India–EU engagement and international migration”

^[37] Noah Smith, “Japan Begins Experiment of Opening to Immigration,” Bloomberg Opinion, 23 May 2019.

^[38] Janine Berg, Florence Bonnet and Sergei Soares, “Working from home: Estimating the worldwide potential,” VoxEU & CEPR, 11 May 2020.

^[39] Sangeet Jain, “The coronavirus has hurtled unprepared economies into the future of work,” Observer Research Foundation, 29 April 2020.

^[40] Daniel Susskind, A world without work: Technology, automation and how we should respond (UK: Penguin UK, 2020).

^[41] Mary L. Gray and Siddharth Suri, Ghost work: How to stop Silicon Valley from building a new global underclass (Boston: Eamon Dolan Books, 2019).

^[42] Abrieu Ramiro, Martin Rapetti, Urvashi Aneja and Krish Chetty, “How to Promote Worker Wellbeing in the Platform Economy in the Global South,” G20 Insights, 7 May 2019.

^[43] Ann Toews, “‘Ghost Work’ in Modi’s India: Exploitation or Job Creation?” Foreign Policy Research Institute, 28 June 2019.

^[44] Ramiro et al., “How to Promote Worker Wellbeing in the Platform Economy in the Global South”

^[45] D. Ravi Kanth, “India sets the stage for a clash with US, EU at WTO,” The Mint, 1 March 2017.

^[46] Surupa Gupta and Sumit Ganguly, “Why India Refused to Join the World’s Biggest Trading Bloc,” Foreign Policy, 23 November 2020.

^[47] Pritam Banerjee, “Fixing India’s Economic Diplomacy,” The Diplomat, 16 June 2017.

^[48] Arpita Mukherjee, Avantika Kapoor and Angana Parashar Sarma, “High-Skilled Labour Mobility in an Era of Protectionism: Foreign Startups and India,” ICRIER Working Paper, July 2018.

^[49] Sangeet Jain, “The National Education Policy 2020: A policy for the times,” Observer Research Foundation, 6 August 2020.

^[50] Ministry of Human Research Development, National Education Policy 2020.

^[51] Panudda Boonpala and Max Tunon, “Quality Not Quantity – It’s Time To Re-Think Overseas Employment,” UN Blogs.

^[52] Laura Sili, “Technology and the future of work in developing economies,” International Growth Centre, 20 March 2019.

^[53] Yueh, “Economic Diplomacy in the 21st Century”

^[54] Steffen Hertog, “The future of migrant work in the GCC: literature review and a research and policy agenda,” London School of Economics and Political Science (paper presented at Fifth Abu Dhabi Dialogue Ministerial Consultation of Abu Dhabi Dialogue Among the Asian Labor Sending and Receiving Countries, 16-17 October 2019).

^[55] Potnuru and Sam, “India–EU engagement and international migration”

^[56] Devesh Kapur, Diaspora Development and Democracy: The Domestic Impact of International Migration from India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

^[57] Devesh Kapur, “Migration and India,” Centre for the Advanced Study of India, 30 August 2010.

^[58] Helen Dempster and Andie Fong Toy, “How Has COVID-19 Affected APTC’s Efforts to Promote Labor Mobility in the Pacific?” Centre for Global Development, 13 July 2020.

^[59] Ashley J. Tellis, “Troubles Aplenty: Foreign Policy Challenges for the Next Indian Government,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 20 May 2019.

^[60] Alwun Didar Singh, “Working with the Diaspora for Development Policy Perspectives from India,” CARIM-India Research Report 2012/25, Fiesole, European University Institute and Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, 2012.

^[61] Mukherjee et al., “High-Skilled Labour Mobility in an Era of Protectionism”

^[62] Parama Sinha Palit, “Modi and the Indian Diaspora,” RSIS Commentary, no. 241 (28 November 2019).

^[63] Nithin Coca, “How can we better protect migrant workers in the next global crisis?” Devex, 24 September 2020.

^[64] “Building bureaucracies that adapt to complexity” (webinar, Overseas Development Institute, 30 November 2020).

^[65] Boonpala and Tunon, “Quality Not Quantity”

^[66] “Global labour mobility is in India’s interest,” The Hindu, 7 May 2018.

^[67] Arjun Bhargava, “Economic diplomacy is now core component of India’s foreign policy,” Observer Research Foundation.

^[68] Banerjee, “Fixing India’s Economic Diplomacy”

^[69] Kuttappan, “Indian migrant workers in Gulf countries are returning home without months of salary owed to them”

^[70] Kali Robinson, “What Is the Kafala System?” Council on Foreign Relations, 20 November 2020.

^[71] Smith and Zimmer, “The Covid-19 pandemic will probably not mark the end of the Kafala system in the Gulf”

^[72] UNESCAP, In-migration: Situation Report, UNESCAP.

^[73] S. Irudaya Rajan, Varun Aggarwal and Priyansha Singh, “Draft Emigration Bill 2019: The Missing Links,” Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 54, Issue No. 30 (27 July 2019).

^[74] Abraham, “Migration Governance in a Pandemic”

^[75] Abraham, “Migration Governance in a Pandemic”

^[76] Potnuru and Sam, “India–EU engagement and international migration”

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“the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level”, and as

“Sustainable development” – “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Sustainability of the WTO

Applying the first of these two definitions of sustainability: the WTO must not continue as it is.  It must succeed as a forum for negotiations, where agreements evolve and be relevant; it must be a place where disputes are settled; and it must be a fount of information on every subject that a national trade policy maker requires to make informed decisions.  Continued underinvestment in the institution is not acceptable.  Maintaining the status quo can only lead to further disaffection. 

The economic history of the last seven decades has validated the wisdom of the founders in their decision to create the multilateral trading system. There is only one sensible world order and it includes a global framework for rules-based trade.  However, stasis will not suffice.  It is necessary to respond now to the challenges before us – dealing with the pandemic, supporting the needed economic recovery, taking responsibility for stewardship of the planet and its peoples, and WTO institutional reform. 

Recognizing that their relations in the field of trade and economic endeavour should be conducted with a view to raising standards of living, ensuring full employment and a large and steadily growing volume of real income and effective demand, and expanding the production of and trade in goods and services, while allowing for the optimal use of the world’s resources in accordance with the objective of sustainable development, seeking both to protect and preserve the environment and to enhance the means for doing so in a manner consistent with their respective needs and concerns at different levels of economic development, … .

There is no better place to start a conversation on this subject than to examine the activities of the WTO in relation to the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which aim to transform our world by the year 2030:

• GOAL 1: No Poverty
• GOAL 2: Zero Hunger
• GOAL 3: Good Health and Well-being
• GOAL 4: Quality Education
• GOAL 5: Gender Equality
• GOAL 6: Clean Water and Sanitation
• GOAL 7: Affordable and Clean Energy
• GOAL 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
• GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
• GOAL 10: Reduced Inequalities
• GOAL 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
• GOAL 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
• GOAL 13: Climate Action
• GOAL 14: Life Below Water
• GOAL 15: Life on Land
• GOAL 16: Peace, Justice and  Strong Institutions
• GOAL 17: Partnerships for the Goals

The SDGs explicitly identify trade, alongside finance, technology and capacity building, as a means of implementation, that is, as a tool to achieve the SDGs. This perspective closely mirrors the WTO’s founding charter, where global co-operation in trade is a means to unleash growth, alleviate poverty, raise living standards and ensure full employment, while also protecting the environment.

In a 2018 publication, Mainstreaming trade to achieve the sustainable development goals, the WTO looked at how its work could support efforts to fulfill the SDGs. That report emphasized nine of the seventeen SDGs, in the sections which are summarized here:

How trade contributes to delivering key Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 1: No Poverty

WTO 2018: There is increasing evidence that well planned and strategically executed trade policy initiatives can impact positively on sustainable poverty reduction. Trade opening has also generated higher living standards through greater productivity, increased competition and more choice for consumers and better prices in the marketplace.

The UN cites two specific goals:

• By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty for all people everywhere, currently measured as people living on less than $1.25 a day.
• By 2030, reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions.

It should be beyond doubt that by these two agreed measures, the trading system has contributed toward this goal.  Progress has been made toward lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.  Trade contributes to higher living standards through productivity increases, made it possible by access to global markets and sources of supply.  Decades of empirical evidence indicate that the countries that have sustained high per capita growth rates long enough to transform people’s living standards and life prospects used the global economy to drive growth.

Broadly open global markets provided demand far larger than the home market, to be sure, but also served as a source of ideas, technology, and knowhow. While the years before the pandemic saw substantial progress on reducing poverty, the countries that lagged behind were generally those that had been unable to break into world markets for goods and services, or only managed to export unprocessed minerals.

Today, trade plays an important role in the economy of developing countries. To have an idea, trade now represents 34% of developing countries’ GDP on average – compared to 20% for advanced countries. Fueled by trade, real GDP per person in emerging economies more than doubled from 1995 to 2019 and facilitated rapid, broad-based economic expansion that has narrowed the income gap between countries and within them.

And, in addition to accelerating economic growth, trade also makes available the necessary resources to implement other development targets in the social and environmental spheres.

There are two groups of challenges to this claim.  There are growing voices against globalization as a creator of income inequality within and perhaps among countries.  There is also criticism that economic growth is potentially incompatible with environmental goals.

Neither set of criticisms is borne out by the facts.  Widely differing levels of income inequality in countries similarly exposed to globalization suggest trade is not the determining factor.

SDG 2: Zero Hunger

WTO 2018: Eliminating subsidies that cause distortions in agriculture markets will lead to fairer more competitive markets helping both farmers and consumers while contributing to food security. The WTO’s 2015 decision on export competition eliminated export subsidies in agriculture, thereby delivering on Target 2.B of this goal.

A well-functioning multilateral trading system is imperative for the realization of SDG 2. In remarks at the FAO in 2017, I made the following points

It is widely acknowledged that trade openness can make a positive contribution to each of the four dimensions of food security as espoused by the FAO, namely availability, access, utilization and stability. Trade openness increases the availability of food by enabling products to flow from surplus to deficit areas, connecting the “land of the plenty to the land of the few”. It enhances access as it contributes to faster economic growth, higher incomes and higher purchasing power. Indeed, in response to the transmission of unbiased price signals, it encourages an effective allocation of resources based on comparative advantages, thus limiting inefficiencies.

Trade openness also facilitates utilisation and improved nutrition by increasing the diversity of national diets and accelerating the diffusion of sound SPS regulations around the world. Lastly, it enhances food availability and reduces price volatility, as risks associated with domestic food production are greater than pooled production of countries worldwide.

In addition, the elimination of export subsidies has levelled the playing field and provided opportunities for farmers in developing countries to compete. This has increased their incomes and enhanced their living standards.  

By making more affordable goods available at home, trade enables poor households to purchase more with their income, particularly essential foodstuffs. Better and less distorted access to foreign markets for agricultural goods that the rural poor farmers produce also opens new employment opportunities for them.

One lesson from COVID-19 is that stockpiling and on-shoring with added domestic investment are not a sufficient substitute for trade flows. 

As my colleague, DDG Xiaozhun Yi recently noted, 

The trade coverage of the regular import-facilitating measures stood at USD 731.3 billion (up from USD 544.7 billion in the previous period) while that of import restrictions came in at USD 440.9 billion (down from USD 746.9 billion). This is a positive development. This drop was likely a result of the sharp decline in overall global trade flows, the diversion of governments’ attention towards fighting the pandemic – through trade policy as well as other areas, and a general commitment to keep trade flowing.

The export restrictions on food seen in the Spring have been substantially rolled back.

SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being

WTO 2018: One of the main objectives under SDG 3 is to ensure access to affordable medicines for all. An important amendment to the WTO’s TRIPS Agreement recently entered into force. This measure will make it easier for developing countries to have a secure legal pathway to access affordable medicines in line with Target 3.B of this goal.

The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that trade can be responsive to human health and well-being.  There was more than a doubling of trade in goods relevant to fighting the disease from 2Q 2019 to 2Q 2020. 

The next challenge will be the distribution of the vaccines. Trade is playing – and will continue to play – a key role in the manufacturing and distribution of vaccines around the world.  Leveraging supply chains for everything from pharmaceutical glass, syringes and refrigeration equipment to the vaccines themselves, where possible, would help scale up production more efficiently than trying to do everything domestically.  The trading system must help deal with any cross-border logistics challenges that exist.

WTO Agreements give Members ample space to pursue health protection objectives and promotes cooperation in the pursuit of health. In the area of food safety and animal and plant health, the SPS Agreement requires that measures be based on science and Members are strongly encouraged to follow international standards. The TBT Agreement also strongly encourages that health protection regulations for drugs, PPE or medical devices be based on relevant international standards. The TBT and SPS Agreements also promote regulatory cooperation among trade partners – such as mutual recognition of certification – which can help increase global access to essential health products.

To this should be added an immediate update of the Pharmaceutical and Information Technology Agreements to cover, among other goods, all those which will facilitate the international movement of vaccines, medicines, equipment (including production equipment), PPE, and IT equipment relevant to fighting COVID-19.  Not only should duty-free treatment be provided but also trade facilitation measures to lower the costs of trade and speed delivery of essential goods.  Medical services should be covered in a companion agreement with the same objective.

SDG 5: Gender Equality

WTO 2018: Trade can create opportunities for women’s employment and economic development. Through trade, job opportunities for women have increased significantly. Jobs in export sectors also tend to have better pay and conditions. Export sectors are an important job provider for women in developing countries.

A group of WTO Members agreed to establish an Informal Working Group on Trade and Gender on 23 September 2020, marking the next phase of an initiative started in 2017 to increase the participation of women in trade. The online meeting to launch the new WTO working group was held at the invitation of Iceland and Botswana.

Women’s empowerment through trade is an important part of the WTO’s current narrative.  There will undoubtedly be a further effort to make this more concrete for MC12, the 2021 WTO Ministerial Conference.  Given that internet access is a boon for micro, small and medium enterprises, in which tend to be disproportionately represented as workers and entrepreneurs, the flexibilities offered by e-commerce should continue to be a great equalizer in these areas, where individual initiative and ingenuity is the first key to market entry.  The bodog poker review e-commerce talks as well as those aimed at making the trading system more responsive to the needs of micro, small and medium enterprises should prove beneficial to the empowerment of women through trade. 

Moreover, the choice of the first woman Director- General of the WTO provides a role model for women advancing in the field of trade policy. 

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

WTO 2018: Trade-led inclusive economic growth enhances a country’s income-generating capacity, which is one of the essential prerequisites for achieving sustainable development. The WTO’s Aid for Trade initiative can make a big difference in supplementing domestic efforts in building trade capacity, and SDG 8 contains a specific target for countries to increase support under this initiative.

Trade is very important in the attainment of SDG 8 as it is generally described in the Agenda 2030 as an engine for inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction.

Opening up to trade affects growth positively through a number of channels. Trade improves resource allocation. It allows each country to specialize in the production of the good or service it can produce relatively cheaper and import the other goods and services, thus exploiting comparative advantages. By extending the size of the market in which the firm operates beyond national border, trade allows firms to exploit economies of scale and become more productive.  Trade also affects long-term growth since it gives access to more advanced technological inputs available in the global market and because it enhances the incentives to innovate.

The rise of populism in the industrialized countries indicates that providing opportunities for decent work and experiencing the fruits of economic growth are not solely a concern for developing countries.   David Riccardo’s voice now has increasing competition among economists who focus on a rising tide not necessarily lifting all boats.  

Technological progress and trade have been key engines of global prosperity. Resistance to innovation and retreat from global integration are not options that will help eliminate extreme poverty. At the same time, policymakers need to ensure that benefits are spread more widely. A reallocation of resources is often necessary to reap the substantial benefits from trade.  Governments need to be better prepared for disruptions, including those caused by the pandemic, and enable their peoples to take advantage of new opportunities.

Like other structural change – notably change triggered by technological progress – trade can create adjustment pressures for certain segments in society, both in developing and developed countries. It is therefore important to have in place appropriate complementary domestic policies to ensure that the gains from trade are more evenly shared and the trade-related adjustment costs affecting certain regions and individuals are mitigated. This can contribute to make the gains from trade truly inclusive and sustainable.  

The global rules for trade must be seen to deliver fairness.  The WTO needs to be widely known for providing a level playing field for trade.  Factory workers, farmers, designers of apps, must all feel that they can rely on the rules of the trading system to provide opportunities to serve markets abroad as well as being able to source what they need from suppliers whether at home or abroad.  Trade must be able to flow on the basis of competitive merit.  The core underlying principle of the WTO, although unstated, is that market forces are to determine competitive outcomes. 

In sports, another area of international competition with roots in antiquity, the Olympics have long strived to provide equality of opportunity to the extent possible.  To counter crimped nationalistic views but allow scope for pride and dignity that comes from excelling on a world platform, the trading rules have to be improved.  The system needs to be widely seen as rewarding those who excel in the marketplace on equal terms to the extent that this can be achieved.  The WTO must combine the heritage from Ancient Greece of the agora, the marketplace, with that of the Olympic stadium. 

SDG 8 contains a lot more to unpack. For example, it includes as a target “endeavour to decouple economic growth from environmental degradation”, as well as youth unemployment.  WTO Members are addressing the former (see environmental sections of these remarks) but not directly as far as I know, the latter.  

One of the targets of SDG 8 is to “encourage the formalization and growth of micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, including through access to financial services”.  There is a current WTO Joint Statement Initiative (JSI) launched at 11th Ministerial Conference at Buenos Aires in December 2017 aimed at assuring improved participation of MSMEs in the multilateral trading system.  Work has progressed very substantially over the last three years and is seen as particularly relevant to the contribution that the WTO can make to economic recovery from the current pandemic.

Trade finance is also a focus of the WTO, particularly for Micro, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises.  The WTO, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and B20 Saudi Arabia issued a joint statement on 9 July pointing to the diminishing availability of trade finance. Warning that gaps between trade finance supply and demand could seriously impede the ability of trade to support post COVID-19 economic recovery, they are urging private and public-sector actors to work together to address shortages.

Another of the targets of SDG 8 reads:

• take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms

Forced labor is not a topic on the current WTO agenda, but it has been discussed.  Although the  WTO has not taken a multilateral decision to address this issue, this does not prevent individual governments from adopting and taking measures that they deem necessary. GATT Article XX General Exceptions permits measures dealing with products relating to prison labour and measures necessary to protect human life. On core labor standards, WTO Members have sought coherence and recognized the role of the ILO in its Singapore Ministerial Declaration.  The WTO General Council in 2003 agreed on a waiver that gives legal certainty to domestic measures taken under the Kimberley Process aimed at curbing trade in conflict diamonds, the mining of which often involves forced labor.

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

WTO 2018: Trade produces dynamic gains in the economy by increasing competition and the transfer of technology, knowledge and innovation. Open markets have been identified as a key determinant of trade and investment between developing and developed countries allowing for the transfer of technologies which result in industrialization and development, helping to achieve SDG 9.

The WTO deserves good grades on fulfilling this SDG even were the benefits of the system were limited to the movement of goods across borders.  The products covered by the information technology agreement foster the global availability the tools that connect budding inventors, innovative individuals, making possible the world wide web.  The WTO provides more than that, however, as noted in the WTO’s “World Trade Report 2020 government policies to promote innovation in the digital age”

Open and transparent trade policies contribute to innovation through improved access to foreign markets and increased competition, which provide firms with incentives to invest more in R&D. This is true for both developed and developing economies: a study of 27 emerging economies shows that both competition from foreign firms and linkages with foreign firms, through importing, exporting or supplying multinationals, increase product innovation, the adoption of new technologies and quality upgrading….

The basic set of GATT and WTO agreements provide a framework that foster “the development of an ICT-enabled economy in countries across all levels of development”.  The framework provides for non-discrimination, transparency, reciprocity and the prohibition of unnecessarily trade restrictive measures.  This framework includes the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Agreement, the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA), the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS).

Innovation will be key to advancing sustainability.  Just as we needed to innovate our way out of the COVID-19 crisis – with adaptable supply chains, digitalized economies, and turbocharged vaccine development – we will also need to innovate our way out of the current environmental crisis.  A striking example of this –is the way renewable energy, especially solar power, is fast becoming cheaper and more cost effective than fossil fuels. This could be the gamechanger in climate battle. And it is at least partly thanks to trade/globalization’s role in spreading renewable technologies, fuelling innovation and driving down production costs. It turns out that the very things many people thought needed ‘fixing’ or ‘resetting’ at the beginning of the pandemic – globalization, free markets, supply chains, corporate innovation – are actually what got us through the crisis, delivered a vaccine, and could provide us with the tools to fight climate change or plastics pollution.

The links between development, technology and trade have been widely recognized. For most developing economies, accessing and deploying new technologies is the primary source of economic growth. Imported capital goods and technical intermediate inputs can directly improve productivity by being placed into production processes. There is significant evidence that global value chains are a powerful channel of technology dissemination. 

Supply chain linkages intensify contacts between foreign firms and domestic suppliers and therefore open up channels for flows of knowledge and know-how. When a foreign firm and a local supplier are part of the same production chain, they need to interact and coordinate to guarantee a smooth functioning of the chain. Face-to-face communication with key foreign personnel will facilitate the transfer of non-codified knowledge and increase domestic innovative capacity. Also, foreign outsourcing firms are more willing to transfer the know-how and technology required for an efficient production of the outsourced input, because they will eventually be the consumer of that input. Offshoring of tradable services has also been key in the development of these industries in the developing world. 

SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities

WTO 2018: At the global level, changes in development patterns have been transforming prospects of the world’s poorest people, decreasing inequality between countries. WTO rules try to reduce the impact of existing inequalities through the principle of Special and Differential Treatment for Developing Countries. This allows the use of flexibilities by developing and least-developed countries to take into account their capacity constraints.

A rising tide lifts most if not all boats, but some boats ride higher in the water than others.  Within industrialized countries, there are wide variations of participation in income and sharing of the benefits of trade.  This is mainly due to domestic policies, not international trade agreements.  But trade agreements can be made more responsive to this set of problems.   Political support for open international trade depends substantially on finding answers to questions of income inequality.  One obvious area of response is the availability of trade remedies under the WTO agreements.  These were conceptually important to the structure of the GATT and the WTO.  Trade remedies were designed to offset unfair and injurious practices and to smooth adjustment to international competition.  That basic concept was lost sight of during the last several decades, and costs are now being incurred.  When trade remedies become unavailable and job losses occur, domestic support for the “rules-based” trading system is undermined. (See also the discussion of level playing field issues under SDG 8). 

Productivity gains from new technologies are reducing the demand for labor in more traditional sectors, such as agriculture or manufacturing. This so-called “fourth industrial revolution” is not going to make all jobs disappear, but it is bringing about enormous changes. While these processes have brought progress overall, it is important to recognize that not everybody has been able to benefit and participate.

This is a challenge facing governments and societies everywhere – in both developed and developing economies. Sustainable and balanced economic progress will hinge on the ability of economies to adjust to changes and promote greater inclusiveness. There is not a ‘one size fits all’ recipe, approaches need to be tailored to a country’s specific situation and mainstreamed into development policy objectives to ensure that trade is inclusive, that it benefits the largest possible sections of the population and that those who may be losing out are provided assistance to adjust.

A challenge that the WTO faces is how to balance the rights and obligations across its diverse membership. In the past this has mostly been done by the adoption of special and differential treatment provisions in the WTO Agreements that in many cases give developing countries flexibilities in undertaking commitments. Views have varied among Members over the potential benefits of these provisions.  Many believe that special and differential treatment, particularly for the least developed, needs additional elements to be effective.  Being freer of obligations for those with limited capacity to participate beneficially in world trade does not convey an advantage.  Moreover, if there are no new agreements, there is only a stock of S&DT that may not deliver much more that is of use.  The entire approach to development needs fresh thinking. 

SDG 14: Life Below Water

WTO 2018: The WTO plays an important role in supporting global, regional and local efforts to tackle environmental degradation of our oceans under SDG 14. The Decision on Fisheries Subsidies taken by WTO members in December 2017 is a step forward in multilateral efforts to comply with SDG Target 14.6, committing members to prohibit subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, and eliminate subsidies that contribute to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, with special and differential treatment for developing and least-developed countries. Members committed to fulfilling this commitment by the 12th Ministerial Conference.

There is currently active engagement of WTO Members in negotiations to reach this goal.  While the trade aspect of the negotiations is certainly an important element, it is worth highlighting that the principal objective in the negotiating mandate is an environmental one. This is a first for the WTO.  A successful conclusion of these negotiations will demonstrate the importance and flexibility of the multilateral trading system in pursuing global aims that go beyond the purely economic.

SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals

WTO 2018: SDG 17 recognizes trade as a means of implementation for the 2030 Agenda. The targets under this goal call for: countries to promote a universal, rules-based, open, non-discriminatory and equitable multilateral trading system; the increase of developing countries’ exports and doubling the share of exports of least-developed countries (LDCs); and the implementation of duty-free and quota-free market access for LDCs with transparent and simple rules of origin for exported goods. The WTO is the key channel for delivering these goals.

The UN states the following with respect to trade and SDG 17:

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development defines international trade as “an engine for inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction, [that] contributes to the promotion of sustainable development”. The adoption of Agenda 2030 commits UN member states to continue to promote “meaningful” trade liberalization over the next 15 years to help maximize the contribution of trade to the success of the sustainable development agenda. In this context, international trade is expected to play its role as a means of implementation for the achievement of the SDGs.

As major institutional stakeholders on trade and the SDGs issues, UNCTAD, WTO, and International Trade Center monitor trends, analyze policy and build analytical capacity for making international trade an engine for sustainable development.

The WTO works closely with FAO with respect to achieving SDG 2.  With respect to accessions, the WTO works closely with the World Bank, the IMF and regional development banks and UN agencies.  With respect to the environment, the WTO works with UNEP.  These are a small fraction of the collaborative efforts that support the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals. 

In order to further support efforts at the national level to achieve the SDGs and to ensure that the benefits of trade are spread more widely, the WTO together with our partners in the Geneva Trade hub, UNCTAD and ITC, also recently launched the SDG Trade Monitor, at SDGTRADE.ORG. This website is an online repository of trade-specific development indicators including MFN and preferential tariff rates, amongst others. This database will allow policymakers, trade professionals and researchers to explore the relationship between trade and sustainable development, and to support data driven trade policies.

By implementing responsive, data-driven polices trade can serve as a driver of development, there are impressive figures to confirm that this is the case. For instance, developing countries’ share of global trade has jumped from 25% in 1995 to 43% in 2017. This has happened not just because of growth in the large emerging markets of China, India and Brazil but also because of increased participation by small, former LDCs such as Samoa, Cabo Verde and the Maldives. All of these countries have graduated from LDC to developing country status and Vanuatu is expected to do so very soon. These countries mainstreamed their trade policies to tackle capacity constraints, using trade and attracting FDI, to advance their economic growth and development which, in turn, helped them to achieve the required social benchmarks they needed to graduate from the ranks of the world’s “least developed countries”.

Recent WTO negotiating outcomes also prove that the system does deliver for development. Successes include the Trade Facilitation Agreement, the expansion of the Information Technology Agreement, the amendment of the TRIPS Agreement easing access to medicines and the agreement to abolish agricultural export subsidies.

The different approaches represented in each of these agreements show that the system can rise to the level of being adaptable and dynamic in its response to emerging challenges. Members must now show sufficient flexibility in their negotiations on fisheries subsidies, WTO reform, and e-commerce, if these subjects with important implications for SDG attainment are to move to a successful conclusion.

This adaptability will also be crucial to an effective response to COVID-19, which is likely to have a severe negative impact on the achievement of the 2030 SDG Agenda.

The Environmental Dimension

The WTO is at the dawn of a new era of addressing deepened and broadened environmental concerns of its Members.  The remaining 8 SDGs, those not highlighted in the 2018 WTO publication cited throughout the preceding sections of this narrative are front and center in the emerging WTO focus.  

Trade policies, pursued through WTO agreements, have a huge potential to support environmental sustainability. For example, reviving and quickly concluding an Environmental Goods and Services Agreement (EGSA) would serve SDG goals 6 and 7, Clean Water and Sanitation, and Affordable and Clean Energy; SDG Goal 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities; Goal 12 Responsible Consumption and Production and Goal 13 Climate Action.

A study by the World Bank found that eliminating import barriers in the top 18 developing countries ranked by emissions of greenhouse gases would increase imports by 63% for energy-efficient lighting, 23% for wind power generation, 14% for solar power generation and close to 5% for clean coal technology. At the same time, more open trade in environmental goods and services can help domestic companies to tap into a rapidly growing global market estimated at US$ 2 trillion per year by 2020.

An EGSA and expansion of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), together with an increase in the coverage of GATS, would address  in several respects these goals, making more available the goods, for example, to enable cleaner transportation and cleaner air and water, and better handling of waste.  Using bodog sportsbook review trade to assist in creating the circular economy; dealing with plastic waste, all would make cities more livable.  Climate would be addressed directly as Members consider initiatives for curb fossil fuel subsidies. 

Just last month, during WTO Trade and Environment Week, several Members took an important step forward for expanding the contribution of trade to the SDGs by launching two initiatives. The first consists of “structured discussions” on trade and environmental sustainability launched by 50 WTO Members.  The second is the informal dialogue on plastic pollution and sustainable plastics trade launched by 8 WTO Members.  

The structured discussions seek to identify areas of common interest and work towards concrete deliverables on trade and sustainability. The group plans to have its first meeting in early 2021. The initiative seeks to build on past efforts by WTO Members to address issues such as circular economy, natural disasters, climate change, fossil fuel subsidies reform, the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and the Blue economy, among other issues that are at the core of the SDGs 7 on clean energy, 12 on sustainable production and consumption, 13 on climate change and 15 on life on land.

Trade and Environment Week also saw the inaugural meeting of the WTO informal dialogue on plastics pollution and sustainable plastics trade. The dialogue seeks to identify areas where the WTO can complement global efforts to fight plastic pollution, for example by improving transparency and coherence of plastic-related trade measures, promoting best practices and tracking trade in plastics, exploring areas for collective action and cooperating with other international processes. These efforts could make a tangible contribution to achieve not only SDG12 on sustainable production and consumption, but also SDG 14 on ocean health, SDG 15 on life on land, SDG 11 on sustainable cities and SDG 8 on decent work, among other SDGs.

One area of great potential for constructive bilateral and multilateral discussions is trade and climate change. The WTO, and in particular its Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE) has a standing mandate to discuss trade and environmental measures with potential significant trade effects and to arrive at coherent, most fit-for-purpose solutions.  Several countries have recently started to look at the adoption of border carbon adjustment measures (BCAs) to support their ambitious climate mitigation plans.  The European Union expects to have a concrete proposal by next June and a measure in place by January 2023, at the latest, Canada, in its recently announced 2020 Fall Economic Statement, and Mexico, in its nationally determined contribution, has also shown interest in such measures. It is my understanding that the next Administration in the United States also envisages a BCA as part of its climate ambition.

It would be an understatement to say that these discussions will not be easy and the potential for trade conflict and retaliation is ever present. To avoid a counterproductive clash over climate-related trade measures, we need to have serious and constructive discussions at the WTO on how to ensure that trade-related measures adopted – and trade more broadly – contribute effectively to transatlantic ambitions on climate change but are also fair and well calibrated in terms of their trade impact. It is worth noting that discussions on the EU plan to adopt a BCA have already started at the WTO, including inquiries in the form of specific trade concerns in three different Committees.  The new US Administration could ensure that discussions move forward in a proactive and constructive way, adding the US unique perspective and expertise to the table.

In the same vein, other trade and climate topics, such as fossil fuel subsidy reform or facilitating trade in low carbon technologies also seem to offer constructive avenues for transatlantic cooperation. If the recent trend of ambitious carbon neutrality pledges continues, the multilateral trading system will certainly have to play its role in addressing the intersection between climate action and the cross-border flow of goods and services. Transatlantic co-operation on these topics could become an important driver of concrete action on these important issues, all of which have big implications for achieving SDG 13

Goal 4 Quality Education

This goal is addressed in a myriad of ways by the WTO.  ITA makes more available computers, smart phones and tablets.  E-commerce talks and the moratorium on imposing customs duties on electronic transmission facilitate international transfer of the tools to educate.  The Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF) helps to increase capacity of the least developed through the spread of technology and information.  The Cotton Consultative Forum for Development is currently working on identifying projects to assist cotton farmers in least developed countries to gain the knowledge as well as the means necessary to increase the value that they can get from cotton by-products.  The WTO is active in providing technical assistance to acceding countries, and more generally to developing and least-developed countries with respect to the full range of WTO agreements. 

Trade in education services can help to increase the supply of education and investment in the sector, particularly in higher education, thereby, contributing to enhancing access and quality in education. In this context, the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which aims at progressively liberalizing trade in services, including trade in education services, is a means of promoting economic growth and development. Leading universities can more easily establish campuses in countries making commitments to openness in this sector.   The GATS provides enough flexibility to craft commitments reflecting countries’ needs and priorities in a way that allows them to reap the benefits of opening trade in education with the aim of achieving the SDGs.

Goal 15, Life on Land

Promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems.  Being able to have efficient use of land depends very much on trade.  Standards must be known, transparency is needed, they must not be protectionist, developing countries must be helped to meet international standards.  The WTO and other partner international organizations have set up the Standards and Trade Development Facility (STDF).  The STDF promotes improved food safety and animal and plant health capacity in developing countries by convening and connecting diverse stakeholders from across its projects, and by piloting and learning from innovative, collaborative and cross-cutting approaches.  Technical assistance can help lessen the use of pesticides and herbicides, including through the fund-raising efforts of the Director-General’s Consultative Framework for Cotton Development Assistance.  Curbing subsidies yields more environmentally friendly use of land for crops.

Goal 16, Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

It should not be surprising that the multilateral trading system, conceived during a 30-year war that took place in two great catastrophic phases separately mainly by a deep economic depression, was intended to be an antidote to conflict.  It was designed to maintain peace.

These roots were over time forgotten – something that historians might come across –  until these last few years, when conflict-affected countries, Afghanistan, Liberia, countries of the Middle East and of the Horn of Africa sought entry into the WTO.  For them, the contribution of integration into the global economy, of thereby increasing the likelihood of stability, the precondition for economic development, the link of trade to peace, the cause of trade for peace, is real, immediate and profound.  These fragile countries appreciate the relevance of the multilateral rules-based trading system as a mechanism for peacebuilding through promoting good governance and the rule of law, reducing poverty and achieving economic growth.

Conclusion

The bottom line:  A new edition of a book on the WTO and the SDGs should spell out how all 17 goals either are or can be served by the WTO and its agreements. But more than a book, we need WTO Members to engage and conclude negotiations that have a direct impact on achieving the SDGs.  I have already spoken about the negotiations to discipline fisheries subsidies, the specific goal of SDG 14.6 on a result on that subject would speak volumes, and you can all push for its successful conclusion.

Trade is one of the best anti-poverty tools in history. By boosting economic growth, trade was a catalyst for reaching the Millennium Development Goal of cutting extreme poverty in half – well ahead of the 2015 deadline.

Trade must play its full part in achieving the 2030 sustainable development goals.  To help deliver on these goals and maximize the power of trade in tackling poverty and hunger, making our economies more sustainable and inclusive, WTO Members must put sustainable development at the core of WTO reform efforts. A reform process that results in tangible progress in fully aligning trade and sustainability would be a major contribution the WTO could make to advancing the issues we are discussing here today.

To read the original blog post, please click here.

Ambassador Alan Wm. Wolff is Deputy Director-General of the World Trade Organization.

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Remarks at a webinar hosted by the Korean International Trade Association, 27 May 2020 (published on the WTO website here)

The pandemic is an unprecedented challenge in our time not just to world health but to the global economy. 

National governments, pressed for a response, enacted both trade restrictions and import liberalizing measures with respect to medical supplies. 

Fortunately, in terms of numbers, the liberalizing trade measures have exceeded those restricting it. 

The WTO Secretariat has obtained notifications of measures from its Members and published information on its website.  This provides essential transparency for planning both by national policy makers and for businesses. 

The WTO has also alerted members to the effects of the pandemic and the responses to it, by issuing a Trade Forecast.  Due to the direct effects of the pandemic, depressing both supply and demand, as well as to a much lesser extent trade measures, the WTO has projected that global trade will decline by 13% to 32% this year.  

Keeping trade open in the face of the pandemic has been the subject of trade initiatives led by Singapore, New Zealand, Canada and Switzerland.  These initiatives have been circulated to the 164 Members of the WTO and have gained additional adherents. 

The evolving shape of world trade, including global supply chains, will be shaped primarily by how businesses view future economic conditions.  There will be some limited on-shoring to the extent that government policies will be available to support this reflow from an era of globalization.  But government budgets will already have been strained by fiscal measures to fight the pandemic.  The availability of funds to support on-shoring is likely to be limited to targeted efforts, primarily perhaps for medical supplies.  And even there, government stockpiles (with domestic sources preferred) may be preferred to direct industrial support.  The products effected and duration of the support may be limited.  On-shoring is likely also to be affected by tax measures designed to restore government finances.

Supply chains will also be affected by some likely diversification among foreign suppliers.  But again, this will be limited by economic viability.  Businesses can plan for contingencies but in the end, must preserve revenues and profits.

The leanest of just-in-time supply chains may be a level of efficiency that can no longer be afforded.  So, inventories will rise but again be constrained by the economics of running a business.

Outside of supporting the production and stockpiling of medical supplies and vaccines, technology and market forces will be much greater factors determining trading patterns than government policies, including the use of regional trade agreements.  In an extreme emergency, even membership in a customs union did not prevent some individual national actions which were at odds with the ideal of a single market.

Regional trading arrangements can be useful for exploring paths forward for rule-making where progress would be more complicated to achieve on a global basis.  In addition, regional integration can be productive and should be fostered.  Nevertheless, in terms of total trade flows, sub-multilateral agreements are not determinative.  Businesses still have to serve markets wherever they are located and will continue to need to reach out beyond the regions in which they are located. 

As a WTO official, my primary concern is with how well-prepared the multilateral trading system is for the challenges that it now faces and that it will face.  For the World Trade Organization, there are three classes of challenges:

• first, dealing with the trade aspects of the pandemic;
• second, discerning trade measures that can aid in the economic recovery; and
• third, planning systemic reforms. 

To view the original blog post at the VOX CEPR Policy Portal, please click here

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