Is the World Ready for Free Trade?

CHARTING A COURSE

How to move forward on liberalizing global trade? By incremental steps of an already agreed-upon agenda or by one great leap to free trade in a grand new negotiation? This question arises as trade ministers from the World Trade Organization's 120 member countries prepare to meet in Singapore in December to chart the course of further trade liberalization. This will be their first gathering since they met in Marrakesh in April 1994 to bring GATT's Uruguay Round of negotiations to a successful conclusion.

A long series of preparatory meetings at the WTO's headquarters in Geneva, which began in the spring and may continue until the eve of the Singapore conference, has foreshadowed what will probably happen in December. They suggest that the world is not ready for a leap to global free trade by a set date early in the next century.

Unless an important issue disappears during the preparatory work, the ministers will be asked to decide four major questions. Three of these, although potentially important to the long-term development of the trading system, raise collateral issues not directly related to trade liberalization. There is perhaps a 50-50 chance that the WTO will decide to address, although not through negotiations, the question of international rules for investment and the new question of "competition policy," covering government and industry practices that restrict competition. The third and most hotly contested question will be whether the WTO should take up internationally recognized labor rights. The United States, France, and other European countries have pushed the issue, but it has met with considerable resistance from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Japan, Australia, and others. Its opponents' expressed concern is that the proposal could lead to veiled protectionism, but some governments may hold other, unspoken objections. Either way, the odds that the ministers in Singapore will decide to address the matter in any significant way are slender to nonexistent.