Trade monitoring

En 2012, los negociadores siguieron tratando de desbloquear el Programa de Doha para el Desarrollo y realizaron ciertos progresos en varios ámbitos, en particular en la facilitación del comercio, la agricultura y la solución de diferencias.

This year’s International Trade Statistics will be the last in its current format. For almost 20 years, the publication has aimed to act as a statistical compendium of merchandise trade, trade in commercial services, and more recently, trade in terms of value added to global value chains. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the WTO, this edition looks back at how trade has changed over the past 20 years.

International trade economists have long been interested in understanding the distributional implications of globalization or trade liberalization or product market competition. One of the crucial aspects of such distributional effects, which have received a lot of attention, especially from the 1990s onward, is how such forces divide the labor pie into skilled (or nonproduction) and unskilled (or production) workers. In other words, does an increase in trade participation or exposure to international markets result in an increase in returns for skilled or less skilled workers?

During 2009 the Office of Internal Audit (OIA) issued a report on the WTO’s travel policies, conducted two follow-up audits on procurement, reviewed current practices on delegating authority, and drafted an internal audit policy and procedure manual for staff.

Desde sus comienzos, el sistema internacional de comercio ha estado configurado por una mezcla de principios y pragmatismo. Las relaciones comerciales no pueden determinarse exclusivamente sobre la base de simples principios puros definidos y acordados en los comienzos. En la determinación de las posiciones adoptadas por los gobiernos intervienen inevitablemente consideraciones prácticas y políticas y expresiones particulares del interés nacional. Algunos comentaristas reflejan esa realidad cuando se refieren a una medida o un enfoque de política del gobierno como “mala economía pero buena política”. Sin embargo, gran parte de la fuerza y del éxito histórico del sistema multilateral de comercio ha residido en la disposición de los gobiernos a comprometerse previamente a observar una serie de principios y normas, sostenidos por disposiciones vinculantes para la solución de las diferencias comerciales.

Trade agreements define rules for the conduct of trade policy. These rules must strike a balance between commitments and flexibility. Too much flexibility may undermine the value of commitments, but too little f lexibility may render the rules politically unsustainable. This tension between credible commitments and flexibility is often close to the surface during trade negotiations. For example, the question of a “special safeguard mechanism” (the extent to which developing countries would be allowed to protect farmers from import surges) was crucial in the discussion of the July 2008 mini-ministerial meeting, which sought to agree negotiating modalities – or a final blueprint – for agriculture and non-agricultural market access (NAMA).