I submitted a query for the IHT‘s Q&A with Pascal Lamy, WTO Director-General. It appeared on Thursday:

Q. To what degree have bilateral and regional trade agreements hampered progress in the Doha Round negotiations?

Jonathan Dingel
United States

A. Hello, Jonathan. So far they have not proven a distraction. I can say that all of our members are well and truly focused on the Doha negotiations. But in the back of everyone’s mind is the question of how these agreements will proliferate absent a Doha deal by the end of the year. Bilateral agreements are not in and of themselves a bad thing. But they don’t cover important areas. Trade distorting farm subsidies, for example, will never be covered in a bilateral agreement. Such agreements, furthermore, can create disparate rules which can be confusing to entrepreneurs. Often the poorest countries are left on the sidelines with respect to bilateral negotiations. The bilateral route is open to the US, the European Union, India or China but not for the vast majority of poor countries. Furthermore, developing countries have a limited clout in bilateral negotiations with developed countries. In the WTO by contrast, developing countries have worked together to establish much more powerful platforms from which to negotiate with developed countries. The WTO is a kind of UN for trade but without a security council!

I am not surprised by Mr. Lamy’s reply, as any complaining on his part about distraction due to PTAs would do little to help the WTO negotiations. I agree with his assessment of PTAs’ inability to address a number of vital issues.

Read the full post for answers to questions from other readers.