Seattle Post-Intelligencer / BLOOMBERG NEWS
GENEVA -- World Trade Organization Director General Mike Moore warned yesterday that a recent surge in free-trade pacts between countries may be seen as an alternative to the global trading system.
Many of the WTO's 140-member governments have entered into smaller-scale trade accords among themselves, or are pushing ahead with plans to do so following last December's failure in Seattle to start a round of market-opening talks.
The Geneva-based WTO estimates those agreements now cover as much as three-quarters of world trade, and market barriers are dropping from East Asia to Latin America. At least 20 regional free-trade pacts are now in place, and the list of country-to-country agreements is growing.
"There is a growing danger that the huge rise in bilateral and plurilateral trade deals could come to be seen as a substitute for multilateral liberalization rather than a complement to it," Moore said in his annual report to the WTO's trade policy review body.
The United States alone has signed accords with China, Jordan and Vietnam in recent months, and is negotiating with Chile and Singapore. It has opened its markets to sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean Basin, and next April will consider forming a Free Trade Area of the Americas -- a tariff-free zone that would cover the entire Western Hemisphere, from Canada to Argentina.
Among others: Mercosur, the free-trade area that includes Brazil, Argentina and other Latin American countries, is negotiating to add Chile to its membership. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has proposed an East Asia free-trade zone, while Australia and New Zealand are seeking to open Asian agriculture markets.
The WTO's top official also said one of the biggest challenges facing the organization, which is struggling to revive the stalled free-trade talks, is to "guard against increased barriers to trade."
"It is disturbing that over 400 anti-dumping and countervailing investigations were initiated last year, up from only 166 in 1995," Moore said. "It's worrying that, according to the OECD, producer support estimates for agriculture are rising again."
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