1995 Reports

The WTO's Agenda: Environment and Labour Standards, Competition Policy and the Question of Regionalism

Bhagwati, Jagdish N.

"The WTO must now confront the phenomenon of a proliferation of
preferential trading arrangements, regional and non-regional Free Trade Areas,
that characterize the world trading scene. It must seek a new equilibrium between
the WTO and these arrangements, the former embodying nondiscrimination
among trading nations while the latter are inherently preferential and
discriminatory. This is not an issue that member nations are eager to put before
the WTO any time. Yet it speaks to the very core of a free, open, multilateral
trading system, as envisaged at the end of the Second World War and as, in fact,
sought by many of us today; and the new leadership of the WTO must address it
on its own initiative."