WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo Speaks on Multilateral Trading System

SIPA welcomed WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo for the annual Gabriel Silver Memorial Lecture on Thursday.

“We are at a really important moment in the evolution of the trading arena,” said Dean Merit E. Janow in her opening remarks. “We are really honored to have with us the person who can guide this process forward.”

The World Trade Organization, which replaced the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, has been monitoring international trade and supporting liberalization of trade rules since 1995.

Roberto Azevêdo, who assumed the position of director-general in 2013, emphasized the continuing importance of the WTO in the international community.

“It will inevitably continue to be one of the main pillars of global economic government,” he said.

The WTO has evolved significantly over the last 20 years into a “very significant, very representative, almost completely universal organization,” he added.

Azevêdo attributed the WTO’s global influence to what he called its three pillars: dispute settlement, monitoring, and negotiation. He said the WTO has been largely successful in the first two areas but admitted that progress is necessary in the third.

Examining this sometimes problematic issue of negotiation, Azevêdo referred to the Bali Package of 2013 as an example of a multilateral agreement that the WTO actually delivered. But, he said, it has been the only one in 20 years.

Still, Azevêdo maintained, Bali remains as game-changer and a testament to WTO’s continuing progress.

The Bali package, Azevêdo said, “was not created by a small group of countries and then sold to the rest. It was actually negotiated between all members."

“The systemic impact [of Bali] is still with us today,” he added. “It’s a part of the momentum that we feel today at the WTO.”

Such momentum is needed to move the Doha Development Agenda, a set of negotiations to  address issues in the developing world that have been a point of contention since 2001.

In this, Azevêdo said, the WTO is slowly moving ahead.

“We understand the challenges,” he said. “We are putting aside the instructions from 2008, and looking at the world in 2015.”

In response to the creation of “mega deals” negotiated directly between countries, Azevêdo maintains that the WTO will remain relevant. Negotiations start bilaterally, or regionally, before they becomes multilateral.

“At the end of the day, I believe trade is contagious,” he said. “You will get more people wanting to be part of the participation.”

The challenge is harmonizing rules and making them comparable, and in that Azevêdo believes the WTO will play the leading role. Developing technology, electronics, and intellectual property are also issues that did not exist previously, that the WTO can help standardize.

The WTO needs to catch up to these changes and improve in these areas.

“We are 20 years old, multilaterally, and we’re becoming adults,” Azevêdo said. “As adults we have to come to the realization that we can do better. And members feel that, that we can do better.”

– Tamara El Waylly MIA ’15