Information technology and e-commerce

Partout dans le monde, les gouvernements interviennent activement et ouvertement dans les économies pour transformer l’orientation, la structure et la compétitivité de branches de production, de secteurs ou de technologies spécifiques. Ces interventions peuvent avoir des effets à la fois positifs et négatifs dans l’économie mondiale hyper connectée d’aujourd’hui. La coopération et les règles internationales sont nécessaires pour faire en sorte que les politiques gouvernementales, telles que les initiatives nationales visant à stimuler l’innovation et la technologie, encouragent l’expansion et l’échange de connaissances plutôt qu’elles ne promeuvent le progrès technologique de certaines économies aux dépens des autres. Le Rapport sur le commerce mondial 2020 examine le rôle des politiques en matière d’innovation et des politiques industrielles dans une économie mondiale de plus en plus numérisée, et explique le rôle de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce dans ce contexte en mutation.

Fifteen years ago, 28 WTO members and acceding members overcame numerous political and technical obstacles, and agreed to work together for the expansion of trade in information technology (IT) products through the Information Technology Agreement (ITA). This landmark agreement demonstrates not only that developed and developing countries can work together in a mutually beneficial manner, but also that the WTO could serve as an effective forum to promote trade opening beyond what was achieved during the Uruguay Round.

The emergence of global value chains – whereby goods that used to be produced within one country are now fragmented and distributed across global networks of production – has offered developing countries new opportunities to integrate into the global economy. This has also had fundamental impacts for workers in developing countries. The chapter shows that higher earnings and employment within sectors and firms is associated with GVC integration, which also supports other spillovers that operate through labor markets. But it has also had distributional implications of where jobs go and the types of jobs they are. Jobs growth has occurred directly in the export sector, as well as indirectly through linkages of exporting firms to domestic, input-supplying firms. Employment creation and wage gains have been biased towards more skilled workers in developing countries, which contrasts with the predictions of trade theory. The skill-biased nature of GVC trade is associated with increased complexity of global supply chains as well as increased use of skill-intensive inputs, notably services. New emerging trends, including automation and digitization, may further determine how employment in developing countries will be affected by GVC trade in the future. The findings point to education as well as trade and labor policies as important factors for strengthening the GVC-labor relationship.

Este tercer libro preparado bajo los auspicios del Programa de Cátedras OMC (PCO), Adaptación a la era del comercio digital: desafíos y oportunidades, incluye contribuciones de los titulares de las Cátedras OMC de las fases I y II, los miembros de la Junta Consultiva, el equipo del PCO y de funcionarios de la OMC, que realizaron un examen por homólogos de los distintos capítulos y aportaron sus puntos de vista sobre los análisis y las conclusiones de las Cátedras. Contiene un total de 16 capítulos y 13 comentarios, que aportan diversas ideas sobre el comercio digital. Varios capítulos se presentaron como documentos de trabajo durante una actividad paralela del Examen Global de la Ayuda para el Comercio celebrada en la OMC del 3 al 5 de julio de 2019 y en una sesión académica del PCO que tuvo lugar en el Foro Público el 9 de octubre de 2019. Esos actos brindaron oportunidades para que miembros de la Junta Consultiva, académicos, delegados, responsables de la formulación de políticas y representantes de la sociedad civil hicieran comentarios sobre los documentos y debatieran acerca de las opciones de política derivadas de los análisis.

À l’ère numérique, un nombre croissant de gouvernements a adopté des politiques visant à stimuler la croissance grâce à l’innovation et à la modernisation technologique. Les conséquences économiques intérieures liées à la pandémie de COVID-19 conduit les pays à renforcer ces politiques. Le présent rapport examine ces tendances ainsi que le rôle que peuvent jouer le commerce et l’OMC. Il montre que la coopération internationale a un rôle important à jouer pour aider les pays à atteindre ces objectifs plus efficacement, tout en limitant autant que possible les retombées négatives des politiques nationales.

Taking advantage of a new accounting method to decompose GDP production into pure domestic production, traditional trade, simple and complex GVC activities, this chapter examines recent trends in global value chain (GVC) activities across the world. Our main findings show that the pace of GVC activities picked up in 2017 after a period of slow down since 2012; intra-North American and intra-European GVC activities declined relative to inter-regional transactions due to higher penetration via Factory Asia but value chains still remain largely regional; China is increasingly playing an important role as both a supply and demand hub in traditional trade and simple GVC networks, although the US and Germany are still the most important hubs in complex GVC networks; bilateral trade balances are significantly affected by the supply and demand of third countries; and net imports are no longer a proper measure of the impact of international trade on the domestic economy in the age of GVCs.

El Informe sobre el comercio mundial 2018 ha sido elaborado bajo la responsabilidad general de Xiaozhun Yi, Director General Adjunto de la OMC, y Robert Koopman, Director de la División de Estudios Económicos y Estadística. El informe de este año ha sido coordinado por Cosimo Beverelli y Emmanuelle Ganne. Los autores del informe son Marc Bacchetta, Eddy Bekkers, Cosimo Beverelli, Emmanuelle Ganne, John Hancock, Mark Koulen, Andreas Maurer, José-Antonio Monteiro, Coleman Nee, Roberta Piermartini, Stela Rubinova, Viktor Stolzenburg, Robert Teh y Ankai Xu (División de Estudios Económicos y Estadística).