The Right to Trade
Rethinking the Aid for Trade Agenda
Aid for trade is a fixture in the development landscape, accounting for approximately 25 per cent of total ODA, and is being positioned as a building block in the future development agenda beyond the 2015 expiry of the Millennium Development Goals.
In The Right to Trade, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton argue that aid for trade has not delivered on its initial promise.
To create a genuinely pro-development trade liberalisation agenda, the authors propose that a ‘right to trade’ and a ‘right to development’ be enshrined within the WTO’s dispute settlement system; and that aid for trade funds be consolidated into a coherent and predictable framework, where dedicated funds are committed by rich countries to a Global Trade Facility and dispersed through a transparent and competitive process.
Together these proposals would help ensure that international trade works for developing countries and will help preserve a development-friendly multilateral trading system.
Contents
About the authors
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations and acronyms
Summary
1. Introduction
2. From ‘Trade Not Aid’ to ‘Aid for Trade’
2.1 Questioning the benefits of liberalisation
2.2 Birth of aid for trade
2.3 Questioning the effectiveness of aid
3. Has Bringing Aid and Trade Together Helped?
3.1 Have aid for trade programmes helped to promote trade and development?
3.2 Has the emergence of aid for trade increased the overall effectiveness of aid?
4. A Proposal to Support Pro-development Trade Liberalisation
4.1 The ‘right to trade’
4.1.1 Remedies
4.1.2 Who can bring an action?
4.1.3 Breadth and specificity of the right to trade
4.2 Global Trade Facility
5. Conclusion
Notes
References
About the contributors
Joseph E. Stiglitz (Author)
Joseph E Stiglitz was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001 and is a University Professor at Columbia University. He was Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997–2000 and Chair of President Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors from 1995–1997.Andrew Charlton (Author)
Andrew Charlton is an economist who has worked for the London School of Economics, the United Nations and the Boston Consulting Group. Between 2008 and 2010 he was senior economic adviser to the prime minister of Australia. He received his doctorate in economics from Oxford University.Reviews
'the authors make a unique contribution to the trade and development literature by recommending that the WTO prioritize the interests of the poor via new mechanisms for dealing with trade disputes within UNCTAD, and the establishment of new funding sources to help mitigate the losses experienced by poorer countries as they liberalize.'
Caribbean Journal of International Relations and Diplomacy Vol. 2 No. 3 Sept 2014
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