The Prospects for the Multilateral Trading System after Nairobi

Agnes Ghibutiu

Impact of Socio-economic and Technological Transformations at National, European and International Level (ISETT), 2015, vol. 10

Abstract: The multilateral trading system built around the World Trade Organization (WTO) is confronted with major challenges arising from the far-reaching economic and geopolitical changes that have marked the global landscape over the recent decades. The rise of developing countries and the consequent powershift in the world economy, and the surge in regional trade agreements are bearing heavily on two of the WTO’s core functions, i. e.: negotiating trade opening and crafting multilateral rules. These systemic problems are further aggravated by the sharp slowdown in trade growth and the growing turmoil in the global economy, with the prospects for trade revival being overshadowed by macroeconomic and geopolitical risks that are fuelling concerns over increasing protectionism and trade frictions among trading partners. Against this backdrop, the paper examines the relevance of the Tenth WTO Ministerial Conference held in December 2015 in Nairobi (Kenya) for preserving the organization’s central role in global cooperation and trade governance. It highlights the stakes involved in the Nairobi Conference and analyzes its achievements and shortcomings. It finds that the WTO is experiencing a difficult adjustment to bring the multilateral trade rules in line with the new realities in the world economy. However, this process is fraught with great uncertainties about global trade governance.

Keywords: the multilateral trading system; the World Trade Organization (WTO); the Doha Round; trade policy; multilateral trade agreements; regional trade agreements; trade liberalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.iem.ro/rem/index.php/itset/article/view/230/289 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iem:imptrs:v:10:y:2015:id:2822000009590003

Access Statistics for this article

Impact of Socio-economic and Technological Transformations at National, European and International Level (ISETT) is currently edited by Simona Moagar Poladian, PhD

More articles in Impact of Socio-economic and Technological Transformations at National, European and International Level (ISETT) from Institute for World Economy, Romanian Academy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ionela Baltatescu ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).