Guest Author: Denis Hussey, Tasman Transparency Group

Philippa Dee and Christopher Findlay have correctly identified the issues facing the WTO in dealing with ‘behind-the-border’ barriers, the major impediments to trade in services. Their approach recognizes that reform of these barriers requires a domestic transparency process operating in (and by) individual WTO countries.

The approach they advocate is of major importance in enhancing the domestic benefits for countries participating in multilateral trade negotiations, and for the future of the WTO system. ‘Behind-the-border’ barriers often apply at a regional or provincial level, and are therefore quite unlikely to reach the negotiating table unless the national ‘offers’ governments take to negotiations in Geneva are consciously structured to include these non-transparent barriers to trade.

The WTO has no authority to deal with these barriers. Read more…

Author: Christopher Findlay

The WTO’s contribution to services reform is through its principles not its processes. Its processes exaggerate the anxieties which are impeding its own progress. We call for more effort to change services policy from opaque to transparent and to bring home the benefits of domestic reform.

The argument is set out below in and edited extract from my paper with Philippa Dee called Services: A ‘Deal-Maker’ in the Doha Round?, Chapter 3 in Monitoring Trade Policy: A New Agenda for Reviving the Doha Round [pdf] which includes contributions from Patrick Messerlin, Alan Deardorff, Robert Stern, Bruce Blonigen and John Whalley.

[In the mean time, the Mortimer review and its issues paper are well worth checking out for services trade. The review is due to report on 31 August]

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