A sobering reminder for those who think plurilateral agreements (ie those involving only some WTO members) can simply be placed outside the WTO, if (as is the case right now) some countries block the consensus needed to insert the agreement into the WTO system. Having a secretariat matters.
an outstanding post for anybody interested in trade transparency. Given WTO experience arguable that a proper documents database is hard to construct without a secretariat. I hope next post looks at provisions and performance on notifications and importance for traders @coppetainpu.bsky.social
This post was surprisingly popular this week. I did some digging into how to keep track of the CPTPP’s various committees (among other things). I think there is some room for improvement! open.substack.com/pub/tradenot...
Properly following CPTPP implementation (or searching CPTPP records) requires jumping across various government websites and often knowing specifically where to look. In this post I show the problems ...
Week Ahead: Trade at the European Parliament, #EUMercosur#WTOborderlex.net/2024/10/07/w...
Do you honestly believe that Tata and Chinese steel give one solitary fuck about WTO rules in 3rd countries? They are only interested in profit, deregulation is a free-for-all and Brexit opened the floodgates to chaos.
The people who spent the previous 30 years obsessed with leaving the EU turned out to know little about it, or about what "WTO Rules Only" would actually mean, and how international trade and logistics has evolved since 1975.
Having no plan was reasonable as long as they stuck with "we will need a debate about the various options" line. But that was swiftly dropped in favour of "the uncontestable popular mandate for WTO Rules Only Hard Brexit, the only one that's real" at which point it was their baby.
Remember all the Brexiters that would demand WTO rules instead of EU ones without a clue what that meant? You don't hear them say shit about that anymore, now they've heard ECHR is the problem, so now they're experts on that. Expect Dunning-kruger statements on the white paper now 😑
Also worth noting is that even back in the 2000s, right after China got into the WTO, there were LOTS of restrictions on trade with China (anti-dumping duties being a big one). We've never been close to having free trade with China.
Resta saber o wto de estrago vai fazer o tiro no pé q o marcinha deu...