Saving Multilateralism: Renovating the House of Global Economic Governance for the 21st Century

Last December, the eyes of all those with a stake in international affairs turned to Europe. First they looked to Geneva, for signs that the long-running Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) would get back on track after years of stalemate. Then observers turned to Copenhagen, hoping to see a binding and comprehensive agreement reflecting a commitment on the part of the world’s governments to address the pressing global challenge of climate change. They were to be sorely disappointed. Inscribed on the faces of those struggling to reach agreements was a deep frustration with multilateral processes that were proving incapable of delivery. Instead of agreement, the images playing out on television screens and in newspapers around the world were of fractiousness and division, due in part to the large number of participants and contentiousness of the issues faced; of anger, on the part of all those who felt marginalized by the process; and of concern, from those looking for signs that the world still has the capacity to reach accords when it really matters. The failure of these meetings to produce formal agreements—or even specific paths to reaching agreements in the future—despite the high stakes and the political capital that had been invested in advance left many questioning the ability of the world’s leaders to meet global challenges, shedding a spotlight on the institutions and fora that were established for the purpose of achieving multilateral solutions to the most pressing collective problems of the 21st century. Why did these meetings fail? Many had assumed that the most significant economic crisis since the Great Depression and the overwhelming scientific and circumstantial evidence of damaging changes to our climate would compel world leaders to set aside their differences and reach meaningful agreements. But it did not happen. It is not that the problems are not big enough or urgent enough. The failure to reach agreements can best be seen as part of a long-term trend toward increased complexity in the world that makes it nearly impossible to reach traditional multilateral binding accords, combined with a waning of faith on the part of many countries in multilateralism and multilateral institutions

Multilateral Economic Institutions and U.S. Foreign Policy: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Multilateral Int\u27l Dev., Multilateral Insts., & Int\u27l Econ., Energy, & Envtl. Pol\u27y of the S. Comm. on Foreign Relations, 115th Cong., Nov. 27, 2018 (Statement of Jennifer A. Hillman)

Virtually every major international gathering of world leaders recently has ended in failure—or at least failure to reach enough agreement to issue a concluding statement or communique. These failures come at a time when many have been looking for signs that world leaders would come together to address the most pressing problems facing the world—including climate change, the breakdown in the rules of the international trading system, the need everywhere for good jobs that pay a living wage, and rapidly growing income inequality. The failure of these meetings to produce formal agreements—or even specific paths to reaching agreements in the future—despite the high stakes has left many questioning the ability of the world’s leaders to meet global challenges, shedding a spotlight on the institutions and fora that were established for the purpose of achieving multilateral solutions—particularly the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The failure to reach agreements can best be seen as part of a long-term trend toward increased complexity in the world that makes it nearly impossible to reach traditional multilateral binding accords, combined with a waning of faith on the part of many countries in multilateralism and multilateral institutions. A number of clear trends emerge from the failures to reach accords at virtually all recent international gatherings: 1) Government policies and international arrangements for collective decision-making have not kept pace with changes in the world, especially the high degree of international economic integration and interdependence. Much of the increasing complexity in the international economic order stems from the explosive growth in the number and size of multinational corporations and financial institutions, many of which now dwarf the size of most of the nations in the world. Added to the complexity is the increase in the speed at which goods, money and technology moves around the globe in our digital age. 2) Learning to operate in this vastly more complex world will require more multilateralism, not less. As countries emerged from the era of colonialization and began opening their markets, the number of players on global stage increased, making reaching consensus among a much larger group of disparate interests more difficult. But because the most significant problems facing the world cross many international boundaries, solving them will require that countries come together to find regional, plurilateral, or global solutions. 3) It is essential that the international economic institutions be updated and improved, not destroyed or left to wither. Because it is clear that reaching major new binding accords or creating new international institutions is quite difficult, the best and most achievable solution is to renovate our existing institutions. Each needs to modernize and improve their governance structures to ensure that work can get done despite the increases in complexities and to update their mandates to ensure the ability to address the problems of the 21st century, many of which are quite different from those that existed in the 1940s when these institutions were created. Given that the crisis is most acute at the WTO, this testimony will focus on what must be done to renovate the World Trade Organization and why doing so is critical, both for the trading system and for the continued existence of a rules-based international economic order. The need for the WTO and its dispute settlement system to remain viable is particularly critical if we are to address the challenges presented by the explosive growth of China and its transformation into the largest exporter of goods in the world

Surgery on SL~×En\widetilde{\Bbb{SL}}\times\Bbb{E}^n-manifolds

We show that although closed $\widetilde{\Bbb{SL}}\times\Bbb{E}^n$-manifolds do not admit metrics of nonpositive sectional curvature, the arguments of Farrell and Jones can be extended to show that such manifolds are topologically rigid, if $n\geq2$.Comment: 7 pages, AMS-LaTeX file, To appear in the Canadian Mathematical Bulletin

Changing Climate for Carbon Taxes: Who’s Afraid of the WTO?

Carbon taxes have recently become a major source of discussion in the Washington, DC policy community. Supporters contend that they offer an efficient way to simultaneously create incentives to emit less carbon dioxide and reduce the budget deficit. Leading think tanks from both the left and the right, including Brookings, the American Enterprise Institute, and Resources for the Future, have hosted dialogues on how to structure the tax and use the revenues. Meanwhile, lawmakers have proposed two carbon tax bills during this congressional session: 1) Senators Boxer (D-CA) and Sanders (I-VT) put forward a plan to assess coal, oil, and gas producers a $20-per-ton carbon tax; and 2) Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), along with Rep. Blumenauer (D-OR) and Senators Whitehouse (D-RI) and Schatz (D-HI) released a discussion draft of a bill that would impose a fee of between$15 and $30 per ton on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, factories, refineries, and other major emitters of carbon dioxide. Should such a carbon tax be enacted, it will in all likelihood be accompanied by measures to ensure that the U.S. industries that would be most heavily affected by the tax are not placed at a competitive disadvantage with respect to competitor producers operating in countries that have not imposed any restrictions or taxes on carbon usage. Any such efforts to “level the playing field” will raise numerous questions regarding their compatibility with U.S. international obligations, especially their legality under agreed upon rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and in particular, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Can such a carbon tax be applied in a way that does not violate U.S. obligations under the WTO Agreements? I believe the answer is yes, provided that policymakers carefully design such a tax, keeping in mind the basic requirements of the WTO not to discriminate in favor of domestic producers or to favor imports from certain countries over others. The key is to structure any accompanying border measure as a straightforward extension of the domestic climate policy to imports. If so designed, there should be few questions about the measure’s consistency with the WTO rules. Even if questions were raised, the United States would have strong defenses within the WTO system. And even if those defenses were somehow to fail, the United States would be able to make adjustments should some aspect of its carbon tax system be found wanting. A non-discriminatory tax enacted in good faith to address climate change should pass muster with the WTO. Therefore, the threat of WTO challenges should not deter policymakers from adopting a carbon tax system now