Background

In 1944, while the second world war was still on the world leaders tried to pitch for peace through the creation of a system of interdependence. This system took the shape of GATT in Oct. 1947. The GATT system gave a great growth momentum to world economy of nearly 7%. However, by mid 1980s this growth momentum subsided and flattened because of the new issues relating to Non-tariff Barriers. This led to the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations into the ambit of the multilateral trading system, vastly expanding its scope, with a basic focus on creating efficiency in world trade.

In 2001, the Doha round of negotiations were started on new and pending issues with developing countries being a major focus. The core issues at this level were;

• Agriculture- More market access, eliminating export subsidies, reducing distorting domestic support, sorting out a range of developing country issues, and dealing with non-trade concerns such as food security and rural development.
• Non-agricultural market access (NAMA)- To reduce or as appropriate eliminate tariffs, including the reduction or elimination of high tariffs, tariff peaks and tariff escalation (higher tariffs protecting processing, lower tariffs on raw materials) as well as non-tariff barriers, in particular on products of export interest to developing countries
• Services - To improve market access and to strengthen the rules. Each government has the right to decide which sectors it wants to open to foreign companies and to what extent, including any restrictions on foreign ownership. Unlike in agriculture and NAMA, the services negotiations are not based on a “modalities” text. They are being conducted essentially on two tracks:

1. bilateral and/or plurilateral (involving only some WTO members) negotiations
2. multilateral negotiations among all WTO members to establish any necessary rules and disciplines

• Trade facilitation-  To ease customs procedures and to facilitate the movement, release and clearance of goods. This is an important addition to the overall negotiation since it would cut bureaucracy and corruption in customs procedures and would speed up trade and make it cheaper.
• Rules- These cover anti-dumping, subsidies and countervailing measures, fisheries subsidies, and regional trade agreements. 
• The environment- These are the first signi?cant negotiations on trade and the environment in the GATT/ WTO. They have two key components:
• Freer trade in environmental goods. Products that WTO members have proposed include: wind turbines, carbon capture and storage technologies, solar panels.
• Environmental agreements. Improving collaboration with the secretariats of multilateral environmental agreements and establishing more coherence between trade and environmental rules.
• Geographical indications: multilateral register for wines and spirits- This is the only intellectual property issue that is de?nitely part of the Doha negotiations. The objective is to “facilitate” the protection of wines and spirits in participating countries. The talks began in 1997 and were built into the Doha Round in 2001. 
• Dispute settlement- To improve and clarify the Dispute Settlement Understanding, the WTO agreement dealing with legal disputes. These negotiations take place in special sessions of the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB). Exceptionally, they are not part of the “single undertaking” of the Doha Round.

Current Issue

 Recently, the developed countries are pushing to put new issues including the following on the negotiating table of the WTO since 11th Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires;

• investment facilitation,
• e-commerce, and
• MSMEs 

However, developing countries like India are apprehensive that it might dilute the existing agenda such as agriculture and development. In recent years, the developed countries have intensified pressures to incorporate still more issues which are to their advantage into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) system. This is being resisted by many developing countries, on the grounds that:

• The linking of issues to the possibility of imposing sanctions — using the device of attaching the prefix “trade-related” to the chosen topics — was successfully achieved in the Uruguay Round as intellectual property rights (through a trade-related intellectual property rights agreement) and investment issues (through a trade-related investment measures agreement) were injected into the GATT/WTO system. 
• In fact, the real objective was to link the chosen issues to the threat of “trade retaliation and penalties” for non-compliance with disciplines thereon.
• The device of linking trade with other issues (when the intention is really to link the dispute settlement system of the WTO, including its provisions for trade retaliation, to new policy areas) is being increasingly used for the purpose of further opening up Third World economies or to reduce their competitiveness in the scramble for world market shares.
• The WTO could also be used as an instrument to shift a great portion of the burden of future global economic adjustment (for instance, because of environmental imperatives) to the South, which presently is in a weaker negotiating position in the WTO forum.

India's Stand

• India has opposed inclusion of new issues under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations and asked developed countries to substantially reduce agriculture subsidies at the recent informal WTO Ministerial at Marrakesh.
• It called for continuation of the reform process in agriculture and urged nations to avoid further widening and perpetuation of the imbalance between developed and developing countries.
• India maintains that while some countries viewed plurilateral discussions as a stepping stone to multilateral agreements, such initiatives could, on the contrary, weaken the multilateral trading system and undermine the inclusive institutional structure of the WTO.

Core matters of WTO which are equally important for India:

(i) Permanent solution on the issue of public stockholding for food security purposes, rather than just the peace clause as of now, because a solution on this issue would give a strong signal of determination to end hunger and achieve food security, as mandated in the UN Sustainable Development Goal 2.

(ii) On the issue of discipline on fisheries subsidies, India stresses on the importance of “suitable” special and differential treatment provisions and the need to make a clear distinction between large scale commercial fishing and traditional fishing.

(iii) Easier movement of natural persons (such as skilled professionals), something not of much interest to the rich world, which fears large scale migration from the developing and poor world and the consequent loss of jobs to locals.

Way Forward

It is of urgent need to avoid further widening and perpetuation of the imbalance between developed and developing countries. The US, Germany, France, Japan, and Switzerland among others embarked on aspirational issues only after sustained industrialization and continuing subsidized agricultural production for over two centuries. Today, China is in a position to call for investment facilitation because it is a net global investor now. Therefore, the developed nations need to understand the difference and need of developing world so that the two grow simultaneously and not the cost of one another.

A procedure should thus be established under which a proposed new issue is assessed on whether its admission would benefit the developing countries and advance the goal of equitable and sustainable development. Otherwise, the multilateral trading system could be grappling with a host of new issues which complicate the workings of the WTO and bring with them potentially dire consequences for development.