Completing Doha Round is a 'political must' - Lamy
17 Aug '07
3 min read
A key feature of globalization is the internationalisation of economies through trade. Since 1950, world trade has grown 30-fold in volume terms. This expansion was more than 3 times faster than growth in world GDP, which expanded 8-fold during the same period.
When the GATT was first established 60 years ago, there were only 23 signatory countries; today we have 151 WTO Members. This simply shows that more countries are now involved in global trade and agree to abide by the same set of global trade rules. In the past, tariff and quantitative restrictions were major barriers to trade.
Following several rounds of multilateral trade negotiations, quantitative restrictions have basically been abolished and tariff levels of countries have been gradually reduced, with the exception of agriculture.
Today's and tomorrow's barriers to trade are and will be more in the area of standards, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, rules of origin or antidumping measures. Today almost all countries are involved in foreign trade, they trade much more, and at much lower costs.
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