Trade monitoring

Seychelles and Kazakhstan became the 161st and 162nd members of the WTO in 2015. In December, the Tenth Ministerial Conference approved the WTO membership packages of Liberia and Afghanistan, which will become members once they have ratified their entry accords. These new accessions bring the WTO closer to its target of achieving universality, with the current membership representing 98 per cent of world trade.

The WTO makes use of various channels of communication, such as the WTO website and social media, to engage with the public. The website received just over 20 million visits in 2016 while our social media channels attracted increasing numbers of followers. Video clips on the WTO website were watched over 200,000 times on average each month. Over 70 WTO publications were produced, with five book launches held at the WTO during the year. The WTO welcomed 208 visiting groups in 2016.

Le Prix 2011 du meilleur article décerné par l'OMC à de jeunes économistes a été décerné ex aequo à un Brésilien et à un Américain. Les économistes Rafael Dix Carneiro, ressortissant brésilien installé aux États Unis, et Kyle Handley ont été distingués par le jury universitaire pour leurs articles sur le commerce et le marché du travail et sur l'incertitude des politiques commerciales. Ils ont partagé le montant du prix.

This section describes the increased synchronization and spread of macroeconomic shocks in the last few years after what appeared to be a general moderation of volatility. It examines the role of global value chains in the transmission of macroeconomic shocks and looks at how export structures influence volatility. It describes how the economic crisis spread from developed to developing countries and how a coordinated response helped to limit the use of protectionist measures in the wake of the crisis. Despite suffering the greatest economic downturn since the 1930s, the world did not see a widespread resort to protectionism. Among other explanations for this was the existence of a set of multilateral trade rules.

Le Groupe de travail du commerce et du transfert de technologie a continué à analyser la relation entre le commerce et le transfert de technologie. Le Taipei chinois a présenté aux Membres son expérience en matière d’innovation et de transfert de technologie. Les Membres de l’OMC ont en outre poursuivi l’examen d’une communication présentée par l’Inde, le Pakistan et les Philippines traitant de la facilitation de l’accès à l’information sur les sources de technologies appropriées.

Supply chains and trade policy are tightly linked to each other. Trade distorting effects of tariff and non-tariff barriers (which are levied on the gross value of imported goods, rather than value-added) are magnified in global supply chains; it takes many more cross-border transactions to provide a single unit of a final good than before. Global supply chains create new forms of cross-border spillover effects and have therefore generated a demand for deep forms of integration, which could make productionsharing activities less vulnerable to disruptions or restrictions. For instance, it is not possible to disentangle merchandise trade from services trade, and standards may need to be stipulated to make each stage of production compatible with the other. At present, “deep” provisions in international trade agreements – covering the areas of services, investment, competition policy and intellectual property, among others – are largely found at the regional level. “Deep” RTAs, in turn, may stimulate the further proliferation of global supply chains if they cover a sufficient number of economies and do not introduce distortions with third countries. However, the wild and tangled growth of RTAs and stringent rules of origin have created problems (“spaghetti bowl” trade). To the extent that RTAs are consolidated and gradually multilateralised, they might prove a useful step to achieving the first-best solution of multilateral trade liberalisation that goes beyond tariff reduction. Examples can be found in the field of technical barriers to trade, trade facilitation, the opening of markets for trade in services and the presence of contingency measures within trade commitments. The multilateral trading system faces the challenge of addressing the need for trade integration between countries while preserving non-discrimination between regulatory regimes.

En la Cuarta Conferencia Ministerial, celebrada en Doha (Qatar) en noviembre de 2001, los gobiernos de los países Miembros de la OMC acordaron iniciar nuevas negociaciones comerciales. Convinieron asimismo en ocuparse de otras cuestiones, en particular la aplicación de los Acuerdos de la OMC existentes. El conjunto se denomina Programa de Doha para el Desarrollo (PDD) o Ronda de Doha. Las negociaciones tienen lugar en el Comité de Negociaciones Comerciales (CNC) y sus órganos subsidiarios, que suelen ser consejos y comités ordinarios que se reúnen en “sesión extraordinaria” o grupos de negociación especialmente creados al efecto. Los Presidentes de los nueve órganos de negociación rinden informe al CNC, presidido por el Director General de la OMC, que coordina sus trabajos.

Les services sont devenus le secteur le plus dynamique du commerce mondial – mais d’une manière qui n’est pas toujours reconnue ou comprise. Non seulement ils dominent aujourd’hui de nombreuses économies nationales, mais ils jouent aussi un rôle plus important dans l’économie mondiale. Cela s’explique par de nombreux facteurs – dont la consommation, la libéralisation et l’investissement –, mais c’est la technologie qui a changé la donne. Les services qui étaient autrefois difficiles à échanger du fait qu’ils ne pouvaient être fournis qu’en personne deviennent de plus en plus faciles à échanger, car ils peuvent être fournis numériquement. Le Rapport sur le commerce mondial 2019 examine cette mondialisation des services – les raisons pour lesquelles elle se produit, son incidence sur les économies et les domaines dans lesquels de nouvelles approches politiques sont nécessaires.