Trade monitoring

The shuffle of jobs offshore (or back onshore) has caught the attention and concerns of policy makers. The structural shifts in industrial structures are creating new winners and losers. Unskilled labour-intensive parts of the manufacturing production process have been increasingly offshored by advanced country firms to relatively unskilled labourabundant developing economies. This “offshoring” phenomenon is expected to reduce jobs for low- and semi-skilled workers in advanced economies while increasing them in developing economies. At the same time, resulting productivity increases in advanced economies can raise the demand for native workers – at least in complementary tasks. The empirical literature suggests that fears of job-losses due to offshoring in advanced economies are often exaggerated – restricted largely to the short-run. Policy makers can address these concerns through strengthening social safety nets in the short run and instituting skills-upgrading programmes to create a more flexible labour force in the long run. Greater challenges lie ahead for these policy makers, with an increasing number of services jobs being offshored from developed to developing economies. Even in developing economies, services offshoring can worsen inequality by raising skill premiums, thereby making investment in education equally crucial there. Looking ahead, given increasing wages in certain developing economies, increasing transport costs, new technologies and concerns about separating R&D from manufacturing activities, there is a possibility of a large number of manufacturing and services tasks returning to advanced economies.

La Secretaría de la OMC cuenta con una plantilla de 634 funcionarios incluidos en el presupuesto ordinario.

En 2012, le Prix du meilleur article décerné par l’OMC à de jeunes économistes a été attribué à l’économiste américain Treb Allen pour son article sur les frictions informationnelles dans le commerce. Le jury a en outre attribué une mention spéciale à l’Argentin Pablo Fajgelbaum pour son article sur les institutions du marché du travail et le commerce international.

International trade statistics and trade policy information provide the facts that firms and policy makers need to take decisions. Equally, they provide the information that analysts and academics need to provide advice to decision makers. Consequently, the accuracy and timeliness of these statistics are extremely important. At a time when globalization is leading to rapid changes in the economic and social environment, the quality of these statistics is more important than ever

There is widespread evidence that countries use trade policy to protect their workers. Sector-level tariffs typically correlate positively with sector wages and employment. This chapter examines the mirror question of how tariffs of other countries of the world affect industry wages at home. To answer this question, we rely on an industry-level analysis of wages in a sample of developing and developed countries spanning from 1976 to 2004. The effect of trade policy is identified through differential exposure of trade policy changes abroad for workers in different industries.

The challenge for the WTO over the next few months is to deliver a final Doha Development Agenda agreement which better integrates developing countries into the global trading system while expanding trade opportunities for all WTO Members.

Le Rapport sur le commerce mondial de cette année jette un regard neuf sur une question ancienne. Les mesures non tarifaires (MNT) existent depuis que les nations font du commerce et elles ont toujours été au coeur des travaux du GATT et de l'OMC. Je vais citer sept raisons pour lesquelles il est opportun aujourd'hui que l'OMC mène une réflexion sur ces mesures.

The previous section has shown that the future of trade and economic growth depends on a range of factors. Predictions may change depending on how each of these factors develops. This section discusses how the fundamental economic factors shaping the future of international trade – namely demography, investment, technology, energy and other natural resources, transportation costs and the institutional framework – are likely to evolve in the coming years.