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Changing of the guard
By
Jonathan Hopfner
When Supachai Panitchpakdi,
former deputy prime minister and commerce minister of
Thailand, succeeded Mike Moore as the director-general
of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in September, he
carried the hopes of much of the developed world with
him. As the organization’s first leader from Asia and
from a developing country, many non-industrialized
nations are confident that Supachai will ensure that
their interests are better represented on the global
stage.
Judging from Supachai's conduct so far,
these hopes seem well founded. Both before and after
assuming his new post, the director-general has
continuously emphasized the need for the WTO to be more
responsive to the demands of its poorer members.
At a conference on global trade held at the
United Nations’ regional headquarters in Bangkok in
mid-July, he warned that the failure of past global
trade rounds to address the issues crucial to developing
countries - such as the continued refusal of wealthier
members to open up their markets to agricultural and
textile imports - risked alienating many Asian and
African nations. He called on the world’s economic
powers to bring "much-needed concessions to the
negotiating table" at future trade meetings. In
addition, he has publicly mulled the idea of
establishing a WTO representative office in the heart of
the developing world, most likely Africa, as many WTO
countries lack the resources to operate permanent
missions in the organization’s current headquarters of
Geneva. This severely dampens their ability to
participate fully in every-day trade negotiations.
Conscious of the WTO’s image as a force that
seems answerable to no one, Supachai has pledged to
increase the organization’s accountability by boosting
its cooperation with local governments, non-governmental
organizations and the public. This, he stated at the
conference, would "create more understanding" regarding
the WTO and its raison d'etre. He has also expressed a
determination to overhaul the WTO’s complex - and
frequently bogged-down - dispute resolution processes,
by making litigation more difficult for members to
initiate.
"We need to emphasize that developing
countries should be helped more than in the past and
that the process of dispute settlement is conducted in
such a way to postpone litigation as long as possible -
litigation is too costly. We must find other options,"
he told participants in the Bangkok conference.
While Supachai's sentiments are clearly noble -
and provide good reason for developing nations to
celebrate - the realities of his new position are
somewhat less encouraging. The foremost pressure on the
new director-general is time; bickering over who would
take the WTO's top post led members in 1999 to split the
six-year term between Supachai and his predecessor,
Moore. This gives him only three years to bring
much-needed change to the corridors of power in Geneva.
Even before his three years are up, Supachai
faces a more pressing deadline. At talks in Doha, Qatar,
last November, WTO members agreed to conclude the next
round of trade negotiations by 2004, ahead of the
official 2005 deadline. As the organization's leader,
Supachai’s primary task is to push the WTO countries to
wrap up these talks ahead of the deadline, a task that
is almost certain to be an uphill battle. The
negotiations span an unprecedented range of topics and
issues. Nearly all of them are contentious, including
the liberalization of trade in services and the
establishment of international rules governing
intellectual property, competition, and countries'
biological resources.
Recent unilateral moves by
the WTO's more powerful members will likely make future
trade talks even more trying. The US has demonstrated
its resistance to compromise by passing a bill that
grants massive subsidies to domestic farmers and
imposing tariffs on a variety of imported steel
products, angering many developing countries in the
process. In addition, the various members of the WTO can
by no means be grouped into clear-cut "developed" and
"developing" camps.
Even nations of similar
economic status often find themselves at loggerheads, as
demonstrated by the European Union's WTO-sanctioned
decision in September to levy US$4 billion of tariffs
against American products as retribution for a US
foreign-sales tax break.
Despite the WTO's
promise to focus the next round of trade talks on poor
countries, high-profile cases like these show that it is
economically powerful nations that are once again poised
to top the agenda. Though he appears to be facing
formidable obstacles, Supachai has spared no effort to
emphasize his confidence that the talks will proceed on
schedule. "It is sometimes arduous in pursuing
negotiations, but we’ll meet the deadline as best as
possible," he said in Bangkok. "I'm optimistic we'll be
on track."
Crucially, Supachai seems to have
realized that his position itself is a delicate
balancing act. His leadership has been championed for so
long by developing countries, it is only natural that
the WTO's industrialized members would view him with
some degree of suspicion, a fact that he seems to have
taken into account. Though he has called for developed
nations to make room for further imports in their
markets, he has been equally critical of poorer nations,
many of which have established protectionist barriers of
their own. And his views that the WTO needs to
streamline some of its inner processes could hardly be
contested by members on any side of the political
divide.
Thus far, Supachai has demonstrated
foresight, a keen perception and diplomatic savvy.
Though it remains to be seen if his tenure will bring
about the change that many both inside and outside the
WTO are calling for, the proposals that he has put
forward seem to bode well for the future. Even the
implementation of one of the initiatives he has
discussed - the establishment of a WTO office in Africa,
for example - would go a long way toward convincing the
WTO's critics that it has taken their concerns into
account.
Jonathan Hopfner is a
contributing writer to the KWR International
Advisor.
KWR
International, Inc (KWR) is a consulting firm
specializing in the delivery of research, communications
and advisory services.
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