Trade monitoring

There is a shared sense that globalization is a powerful engine that has already contributed to lifting many out of poverty and that, if properly harnessed, could further promote growth and development to the benefit of all. For many years, however, concerns have been raised regarding certain effects of globalization on jobs, wages, and job insecurity. Recent survey evidence in European countries, for instance, indicates that in most countries a majority of respondents believe that globalization provides opportunities for economic growth but increases social inequalities. A German Marshall Fund (2007) survey shows that about half of Americans and Europeans think that “freer trade” results in more job loss than job creation. Globalization has also been blamed for the recent financial crisis and its effects on employment.

An important task facing the WTO is that of making the new multilateral trading system truly global in scope and application. The 140 Members of the WTO (as of 31 December 2000) account for more than 90% of world trade. Many of the nations that remain outside the world trade system have requested accession to the WTO and are at various stages of a process that has become more complex because of the WTO’s increased coverage relative to GATT. With many of the candidates currently undergoing a process of transition from centrallyplanned to market economies, accession to the WTO offers these countries - in addition to the usual trade benefits -a way of underpinning their domestic reform processes.

Some WTO members applied new trade-restrictive measures in 2013 but countries generally resisted domestic pressures to erect trade barriers. The new measures added to the existing stock of trade restrictions and distortions. Global economic growth remained slow and uneven and this weighed heavily on world trade flows. The volume of world merchandise trade is expected to have grown by 2.5 per cent in 2013 and to grow by 4.5 per cent in 2014, which remains below historical trends.