Category Archives: Trade

As if undermining the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round of global free-trade talks was not bad enough (the last ministerial meeting in Geneva produced barely a squeak), the United States has compounded its folly by actively promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership … Continue reading →

August 31, 2011 Mr. Barack Obama President of the United States The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President: As the window of opportunity for a robust deal on Doha Round is closing, with the … Continue reading →

LATE last week, a longstanding debate over free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama — deals that were negotiated under President George W. Bush but never finalized — stalled once again. President Obama supports the agreements, but only if … Continue reading →

One may be forgiven if, on reading the ceaseless G20 pronouncements in favour of freer trade, one infers that there is an almost universal agreement that trade matters, that freer trade is a policy to be pursued for public good. … Continue reading →

Contrary to what skeptics often assert, the case for free trade is robust. It extends not just to overall prosperity (or “aggregate GNP”), but also to distributional outcomes, which makes the free-trade argument morally compelling as well. The link between … Continue reading →

In a recent commentary, I drew on the Interim Report of the High-level Trade Experts Group, appointed by the governments of Britain, Germany, Indonesia, and Turkey, which I co-chair, to explain why concluding the World Trade Organization’s ten-year-old Doha Round … Continue reading →

The following is a letter to the editors at the Financial Times, published by the paper on May 6, 2011. Sir, Apropos your editorial “Life after Doha” (April 19) prematurely announcing the death of the Doha Round, and Alan Beattie’s … Continue reading →

The Doha Round, the first multilateral trade negotiation conducted under the auspices of the World Trade Organization, is at a critical stage. Now in their 10th year, with much negotiated, the talks need a final political nudge, lest Doha – … Continue reading →

The current crisis is twofold: it affects Wall Street and Main Street — that is, both finance and the real economy. It has also been accompanied by a sharp decline in trade. The reasons for this decline — manifested not … Continue reading →