Can Doha Still Deliver on the Development Agenda?

Developing countries, especially the poorest, have the most at risk if the Doha Round is not wrapped up this year. If the multilateral negotiations languish, the recent trend toward bilateral and regional trade agreements will accelerate. These arrangements hurt the smallest and poorest countries the most, since they are often excluded. Developing countries would also lose the leverage they gain from negotiating as a group in the multilateral context. Proposals of particular interest to developing countries, including aid for trade and duty- and quota-free treatment for least-developed countries, might also be pulled off the table. Given their experience with the Uruguay Round, it is not surprising that developing countries are waiting for developed countries to offer serious reductions in agricultural protection before making serious offers on nonagricultural market access and services. But developing countries must move, and they must move now.

Labor Standards, Development, and CAFTA

The debate over linking trade and worker rights is often a dialogue of the deaf, with advocates on either side paying little attention to the scope for positive synergies between labor standards, development, and globalization. Instead, each side views the other as promoting positions that will, intentionally or not, impoverish poor people in poor countries. Opponents of global labor standards fear that these standards will undermine developing countries' comparative advantage in low-wage goods or be abused for protectionist purposes, thereby denying workers jobs. Standards advocates argue that failure to include labor standards in trade agreements increases inequality and leads to a race to the bottom for workers worldwide.

Delivering on Doha: Farm Trade and the Poor

Agricultural market liberalization is essential in achieving a successful Doha Round agreement because these are the most protected markets remaining in most rich countries. But the implications for developing countries, especially the poorest, are more complex than the current debate suggests. This volume examines the structure of agricultural support in rich countries and explores the challenges as well as opportunities that developing countries might face if the Doha Round succeeds in reforming OECD agriculture policies.

Opening Markets for Poor Countries: Are We There Yet?

Despite six decades of trade liberalization, trade policies in rich countries still discriminate against the exports of the world’s poorest countries. Preferential market access programs were designed to spur larger and more diversified exports from developing countries, but product exclusions and burdensome rules undermined their usefulness, especially for the poorer countries. Most rich countries have made reforms since the UN Millennium Declaration in 2000 called for duty-free, quota-free market access for the least-developed countries. After the World Trade Organization ministerial communiqué called upon developing countries “in a position to do so” to also provide such access, key countries have moved toward that goal. But much remains to be done to achieve the goal of meaningful market access for the poorest countries, including reformed rules of origin that facilitate rather than inhibit trade.trade; market access; liberalization; exports; least-developed countries; preference programs; rules of origin

The ILO and Enforcement of Core Labor Standards

Although many deny it, a linkage between trade policy and labor standards clearly exists. The International Labor Organization (ILO), long ignored and belittled, is suddenly popular with various constituents who desperately want to deflect pressure to incorporate labor standards in trade agreements and the World Trade Organization (WTO). As a result, the ILO today is getting significantly more attention, more political support, and more resources to deal with core labor standards, especially child labor. In 1998, with strong support from the United States, other developed country governments, and key representatives of employers and workers, the ILO adopted a new Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. In 1999, the ILO approved a new convention to combat the worst forms of child labor, a convention that is being ratified at the fastest rate in ILO history. This year, for the first time, the ILO invoked Article 33 of its constitution in an effort to compel Burma to abolish forced labor.

Labor Standards and the Free Trade Area of the Americas

Relatively little controversy surrounds three of the four core labor standards - forced labor, discrimination, and child labor. But the right to associate and organize freely and to bargain collectively is more controversial. And the use of trade sanctions to enforce labor standards is most divisive of all. In the context of trade negotiations, attention to labor issues can lower adjustment costs, slow a race to the bottom from the bottom, among developing countries themselves, and increase political support for trade agreements in developed countries. Elliott suggests using a parallel track to negotiate labor issues and link progress in those negotiations more closely to the trade negotiations. She concludes that nothing is to be gained by workers and labor activists keeping sanctions to enforce standards in trade agreements as the focus of their demands. Instead, they should ratchet up the pressure on governments to adopt concrete plans of action for raising labor standards and to finance implementation of those plans.

The Problem of Corruption: A Tale of Two Countries

This perspective provides an introduction to the problem of corruption, focusing on two questions: * What causes corruption? * Where is corruption most serious? The perspective concludes with a brief discussion of two countries - Kenya and Uganda - that seem to be going in opposite directions politi- cally and economically, as well as in their attitudes toward corruption

The Problem of Corruption: A Tale of Two Countries

This perspective provides an introduction to the problem of corruption, focusing on two questions: * What causes corruption? * Where is corruption most serious? The perspective concludes with a brief discussion of two countries - Kenya and Uganda - that seem to be going in opposite directions politi- cally and economically, as well as in their attitudes toward corruption