The Truth About Trade
Yesterday, the director general of the World Trade Organization, Supachai Panitchpakdi, released a report by a small expert group consisting of eight members (of which I was one). He had commissioned the group in June 2003 to offer an analysis of the WTO's working in the past and a blueprint of where we ought to take the institution in the future.
The timing of the report could not be more appropriate: 2005 is the 10th anniversary of the WTO. At the same time, the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations under WTO auspices is at a critical juncture. Besides, Dr. Supachai's successor in September will need all the guidance he can get if he is to provide the leadership that the institution needs. With critiques and controversies plaguing the WTO from Seattle to Cancun, it has become necessary to separate the wheat from the chaff. The latter mostly relates to the mistaken rejections of the advantages of freer trade; the former to the legitimate concerns about the WTO's functioning.
The Chaff: Assaults on Freer Trade
Sadly, the critics who are most off the mark, and indeed off the wall, are to be found among the well-meaning NGOs. Enormously rich charities have now turned to agitating about trade issues with much energy but little understanding, prompting the witticism -- when Oxfam agitators at the WTO meeting in Cancun in 2002 were parading with G-8 masks -- that these were a bunch of dummies masquerading as another bunch of dummies.
Oxfam's annual spending is over $350 million; that of Action Aid nearly $140 million: These are now very big businesses. They are under the same pressure to diversify into new areas of public policy (regardless of expertise) as they pursue fund-raising opportunities as are the corporations keen to diversify into new industries as they reach out for profits. These charities have unfortunately signed on to several fallacies about trade that do serious harm to the cause of the poor nations.
Thus, they regularly allege that poor countries suffer from systematic rich-country "hypocrisy" leading to "double standards" in trade policy, with rich countries having more trade barriers than poor ones. The facts, however, are exactly the opposite for the most part. There is greater tariff protection on manufactures in the poor countries: This has followed from the fact that the poor countries, not the rich ones, have long been given special and differential treatment in trade negotiations.
The charities also say that, while rich-country trade liberalization is good for the poor countries, poor-country trade liberalization is bad for them. What is sauce for the rich goose is not sauce for the poor gander. In this fallacy, they are arguing against a mass of empirical evidence which shows that infant industry protection is often counterproductive and costly. Moreover, what postwar trade analyses show, and what the charities do not understand, is that autarkic trade barriers make domestic markets more lucrative than exports, leading therefore to an incentive bias against exports. So even when the rich-country markets are opened further, one's own trade barriers can prevent the penetration of these markets.
Perhaps the greatest damage they have done is in their energetic campaign against agricultural subsidies in the rich countries. The removal of these subsidies is, of course, desirable as it promises aggregate income gains; and many economists have therefore argued for their removal for nearly four decades. But the charities, the heads of international aid institutions such as the World Bank, and the liberal media have now added the twist that the removal of these subsidies will also help the poorest countries known as the "least developed countries" (LDCs). Yet this is dangerous nonsense.
The economists Alberto Vales and Alex McCalla have shown that as many as 45 LDCs, out of 49, are net food importers; and as many as 33 are net importers of all agricultural products. As prices rise with the removal of subsidies, surely importers will be harmed, not helped, except in the singular cases where the importers switch to becoming significant exporters.
Are the rich-country subsidies to agriculture to be put down to hypocrisy? A substantial role in their continuance despite economists' complaints was simply that the poor countries themselves were not interested in agricultural development. They identified development with industrialization; and their own trade policies created a substantial bias against agricultural development. Thus, rich countries wanted to protect their agriculture; the poor countries wanted to decimate theirs. So a Faustian bargain resulted: Hypocrisy is hardly the way to characterize it.
The Wheat: The World Trading System
But if many criticisms of freer trade in the public domain today are to be dismissed, as the WTO report argues, there are also many concerns about the WTO itself, and the world trading system it presides over, that merit attention. There are threats to the WTO's -- indeed the multilateral trading system's -- well-being; and there are institutional features that require correction at the WTO.
The threats come from two directions: the escalating erosion of nondiscrimination and the steady encroachment by rich-country lobbies seeking to impose their trade-unrelated agendas on trade agreements and institutions. The institutional reform requires, in particular, a re-examination of the procedures by which contentious new issues are introduced into the WTO, and of ways to augment its minuscule resources to enable the WTO to play the role that is expected of it today.
Nondiscrimination was at the heart of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that merged into the WTO in 1995. The most-favored nation (MFN) clause ensured that every GATT member faced the lowest tariffs that any other member enjoyed. The few exceptions were explicit: For instance, Article 24 exempted countries entering into Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) such as a Free Trade Agreement or a Customs Union, from having to extend their tariff cuts for one another within the PTA automatically to non-member countries despite the MFN commitment.
But today, this central principle of nondiscrimination has been virtually destroyed. Thus, PTAs have proliferated beyond imagination: They are close to 300 and are growing by the week. There is now a systemic problem: The PTAs, which the architects of the GATT thought would be minor exceptions, have now swallowed up the trading system.
At the same time, developing countries enjoy preferential access to rich-country markets, and to one another, under several exemptions; and the practice of discriminating yet further among LDCs and other poor countries has become widespread. In consequence, the EU's MFN tariffs now apply only to five countries, with all others enjoying politically driven lower-tariff access under different terms to the EU under multiple PTAs, differentiated GSP (Generalized Scheme of Preferences), EBA (Everything but Arms) and other schemes. Evidently, MFN in the EU has now become LFN -- the least favored nation tariff.
Yet another threat to the multilateral trading system arises from the progressive capture by the rich-country lobbies, good and bad, of the trade liberalization process to advance their trade-unrelated agendas. These lobbies pretend, of course, that "fair trade" and what the European Commission under Pascal Lamy has been calling respect for "collective preferences" -- both self-serving phrases that conceal the pernicious nature of the demands -- require that their pet concerns such as labor standards be worked into FTAs and into the WTO .
This has pitted the major developing countries such as India and Brazil against the inclusion of such extraneous issues into trade negotiations and institutions. The Free Trade Agreement of the Americas has also been held up by Brazil, which insists, correctly, on confining it to trade liberalization; the U.S. wishes otherwise. Revealingly, none of the many PTAs among the poor countries ever include these extraneous issues: Their inclusion arises only when the U.S. and the EU, the major powers, are members.
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These and other issues require a clear grasp of what tasks properly belong to the WTO. They also need a serious examination of the manner in which new issues may be introduced into the WTO, in particular when an overwhelming plurality does not endorse them. It also follows that, at this critical juncture requiring leadership, the next director general be examined carefully on his views on these matters.
It also means that, as he navigates the WTO over waters agitated by them, he has access to a world-class and substantial secretariat of his own. The WTO's current annual budget is less than $100 million: No, I did not forget a zero. As a result, the WTO essentially has to rely for trade analysis on the "foreign legions" at the World Bank, the OECD etc. At Seattle, Cancun, Doha and other WTO meetings, the world's media therefore focused, not on the WTO's analyses and economists, but on those at these other institutions, for whom world trade is scarcely a metier. This is a travesty. It needs to be put right.
Mr. Bhagwati, University Professor at Columbia and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of "In Defense of Globalization" (Oxford, 2004). He has been an economic policy adviser to the GATT and an external adviser to the WTO. A longer version of this essay will appear in the January 2005 issue of the Far Eastern Economic Review.
全球贸易的真相
编者按：贾格迪什?巴格沃蒂(Jagdish Bhagwati)是美国哥伦比亚大学教授兼美国外交关系协会(Council on Foreign Relations)高级研究员，同时也是《捍卫全球化》(In Defense of Globalization)（牛津大学出版社2004年出版）一书的作者。他还是《关贸总协定》(GATT)的经济政策顾问以及世界贸易组织(WTO)的外部顾问。
WTO总干事素帕猜(Supachai Panitchpakdi)周一公布了一个8人专家小组起草的一份报告，我也是专家组的成员之一。2003年6月他委托这个专家小组对WTO功过得失做出评估，并为WTO今后的发展方向描绘出一幅蓝图。
这份报告出炉的时间可真是再恰当不过了，因为2005年正好赶上WTO诞生10周年。与此同时，多哈回合多边贸易谈判正处于关键时期。此外，在素帕猜今年9月离职之际，如果其继任者要想证明他具备执掌WTO的领导才能，就必须尽可能地得到更多指引。尽管西雅图回合以及坎昆回合的谈判饱受批评和争论，但我们有必要本著“取其精华去其糟粕“的原则对此进行客观分析。批评大多同盲目拒绝自由贸易带来的实惠有关，争议则和WTO职能引起的一些担心有关。
糟粕：对自由贸易的攻击
批评人士大多行为偏激，甚至是不可理喻，但不幸的是他们还都是乐善好施的非政府组织的成员。这些富得流油的慈善团体现在开始关心起贸易问题来，但他们对贸易问题又所知甚少。例如，乐施会(Oxfam)在2002年WTO坎昆会议期间，组织示威人群带著八大工业国(G8)领导人的面具招摇过市，但怎么看这也算不上幽默风趣，不过是一群蠢人装扮成了另一群蠢人罢了。
乐施会每年的开支超过3.5亿美元，而Action Aid每年的开支近1.4亿美元，在如今这可不是一笔小数字。正如企业为了增加盈利需要跨行出击一样，这些慈善组织在筹集资金的过程中也面临著跨行进入公共政策领域（不管有无专业知识）的压力。不幸的是，他们听信了一些有关国际贸易的谬论，从而给贫穷国家的发展带来了严重伤害。
因此，他们时不时地指责贫穷国家成为富国系统性“伪善政策”的牺牲品，导致国际贸易政策出现“双重标准”，富国设置的贸易壁垒要多于穷国。但实际上，大部分指控恰好相反，穷国为国内制造业设定了更高的关税保护。而这正是穷国，而非富国，在贸易谈判中享受了特殊待遇和差别对待所致。
这些慈善组织还表示，富国实施贸易自由化对穷国有利，但穷国实施贸易自由化则不利于自身经济发展。他们坚持这种谬误，置大量现实依据于不顾。现在社会的大量经济实践证明，保护国内新兴产业往往会不利于生产力发展，还要付出高昂的代价。而且，从战后贸易形势的分析中也可以看出，假如一国执行闭关锁国的贸易政策，那么其国内市场就会比出口市场更具吸引力，这反倒会限制该国的出口。因此，即便是富国进一步敞开市场，穷国自己设置的贸易壁垒也会限制国内企业打入富国市场。这一点，这些慈善团体并不了解。
他们为呼吁富国取消农产品补贴而组织的声势浩大的示威活动恐怕是后果最严重的行为了。农产品补贴当然应该取消，因为这最终会导致农民总收入增加；许多经济学家为此也努力了近40年的时间。但慈善机构、以世界银行(World Bank)为首的国际援助机构以及自由派传媒的种种做法，却让我们迈向这个目标的道路更加复杂了。他们认为消除农产品补贴将有助于所谓的最不发达国家，但实际上这是一派胡言。
经济学家艾尔博特?瓦莱斯(Alberto Vales)和阿莱克斯?麦克卡拉(Alex McCalla)提供的数据显示，在总共49个最不发达国家中，45个国家是粮食净进口国；有33个国家的所有农产品都需依赖进口。一旦取消补贴，农产品价格势必上扬，那些净进口国的利益无疑会受到损害，除非一国能从进口国摇身一变成为主要出口国。
怎么能把富国的农产品补贴归结为一种伪善行为呢？尽管面临经济学家的指责，但富国仍然继续给予农产品大量补贴，这完全是因为穷国对发展本国农业并不感兴趣。他们认为工业化才是发展之道；他们的贸易政策非常不利于本国农业发展。富国希望保护国内的农业，而穷国希望削弱本国的农业。这就出现了“各取所需”的局面，但用伪善一词来形容富国的做法很难站得住脚。
精华：全球贸易体系
但如果正像WTO报告认为的那样，当今对全球贸易自由化连篇累牍的批评声都不值得操心，但对于WTO本身及其管辖下的全球贸易体系也还有不少令人担心之处，而这些才值得关注。WTO，也就是多边贸易体系的健康发展受到了挑战；WTO的有些机构职能确实需要改革。
威胁来自下列两个方面：一是非歧视性原则的地位正在逐步下降，富国在游说过程中不断地把和贸易无关的因素掺杂在贸易协议和协定之中。机构改革迫切需要对两个方面重新进行审核：一是将一些争议性新问题引入WTO的过程，二是如何聚少成多整合资源让WTO发挥今天本应有发挥的作用。
非歧视性原则是GATT的基石。最惠国待遇条款确保了每个GATT缔约国都有权获得其他任何一个成员国享受的最低关税。GATT对例外情况做出了明确规定，例如，第二十四条规定，签署了自由贸易协定或关税同盟协议等优惠贸易协定(PTA)的缔约国不必将PTA成员国自动享有的关税减让扩大到非PTA成员国，但签署了最惠国待遇条款的除外。
但如今，非歧视性原则的宗旨已近乎名存实亡。PTA的盛行超过想像：全球形形色色的PTA总量接近300个，每周都在不断增加。现在就出现了一个结构性问题：当初在设计GATT的架构时PTA只是作为一种例外来看待的，但现在PTA已有凌驾于全球贸易体系之上的趋势。
此外，发展中国家在进入发达国家市场时享有优惠，发展中国家在进入彼此市场时同样如此，只有少数几个例外。最不发达国家和其他穷国之间相互给予优惠的做法已经成为一种普遍现象。举例来说，欧盟的最惠国关税待遇只适用于5个国家，其他国家都通过各种各样的PTA、差别对待的普惠制(Generalized Scheme of Preferences, GSP)协议、武器以外产品(Everything but arms, EBA)协议等安排，获得了更低的关税待遇。显而易见，在欧盟，最惠国待遇已沦落为最不惠国待遇。
多边贸易体系面临的另一大威胁便是，富国游说团体在贸易自由化谈判过程中的影响越来越大，他们希望籍此来实现一些和贸易无关的目的。这些游说团体当然会假装鼓吹“公平贸易”，尊重拉米(Pascal Lamy)治下欧盟委员会一直呼吁的“互惠互利”。但实际上这些都是幌子，是为了掩饰游说团体一些险恶的用心。他们真正希望的是把劳工标准等特别担心的问题批著合法的外衣纳入到FTA条款和WTO章程之中。
印度和巴西等发展中大国自然反对将这些和贸易无关的问题纳入谈判日程。例如，美国和巴西就在《美洲自由贸易协定》上争执不下，巴西立场正确，坚持要求这个协定只讨论贸易自由化问题，而美国却意图他举。值得注意的是，许多贫穷国家在签订PTA时从未包括和贸易无关的问题，这个问题只有在和美国、欧盟这些重要经济体谈判时才会出现。
这些问题要求我们清楚把握到底哪些问题属于WTO范畴，新问题被引入的方式也值得认真审视，尤其是在大多数成员国表示反对的时候更应如此。在这个需要有人勇挑重担的关键时刻，在选拔新任WTO总干事时必须严格把关，认真考察他在这些问题上的立场。
这还意味著当新任总干事挑起执掌WTO的重担、应对种种挑战之际，他还拥有大批世界一流的秘书处。WTO现在每年的预算只有不到1亿美元，对，我没记错，是1亿而不是10亿美元。因此，WTO只能依赖于世界银行、经济合作与发展组织(OECD)等“外籍军团”的贸易数据分析。在西雅图、坎昆、多哈及其他会议期间，全球媒体都把关注焦点聚焦在这些机构的分析师及经济学家上，而WTO自己的工作人员则被冷落在一边。但对全球贸易进行分析并不是这些机构分析师及经济学家的特长，这对WTO来说颇有些讽刺，这种现象必须纠正。
