The completion of the WTO free trade agenda will produce both winners and losers in the EU ' To what extend do you agree? - publié le 05/05/2008

Résumé du document

The World Trade Organization (WTO) was set up in 1995, replacing the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) that was set up in 1947. The organization was based in Geneva and is presently located in 149 countries. It is allocated with a budget of 125 million dollars and its main decision-makers are the United States, Japan and the European Union. China joined the WTC in 2001 after a 15-year battle and is still facing conflicts with the WTO. The WTO has been formed in order to help producers of goods and services, exporters and importers conduct their business. To enable this, it promotes free trade by persuading countries to abolish customs duties and other barriers. It also polices free trade agreements, settles trade disputes between governments and organizes trade negotiations. It is the only global international organization dealing with the rule of trade between nations and the majority of the world's trading nations have ratified the WTO agreements. That's why the WTO is generally associated with globalization and became the main target of alter-globalists.

Extraits

[...] Indeed, it shows perfectly well how the impact of the decisions in the WTO free trade agenda on the European economy is important. In this study, we saw that the winners in the global way are the China and the others emerging countries. They saw their share of market in EU and in the US growing up thanks to their comparative advantages and the disappearing of the quotas. We also saw that this was at the expense of many countries in the EU which export less and less. [...]

[...] That's why some people say that there are winners and losers resulting from globalisation. Clothing and textile sector is certainly the best example to illustrate the globalisation and the consequences of the WTO. Indeed, in EU, where the single market has been instituted in 1992, there has been considerable debate surrounding this subject because some countries appear to lose their market shares in this sector which is one of their main resources. In this study we will expose the facts concerning clothing and textile sector and the situation in member countries of the EU before answering to the question, are there losers and winners in EU resulting of the WTO free trade agenda? [...]

[...] Sources ( Books Winners and Losers in Globalization (2006), G. Dehesa and G. Bertola, Blackwell Publishing ( Websites http://europa.eu/ [Several Researches] http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/discussion_papers5_e.pdf [Acceded on 20th march 2007] http://stat.wto.org/ [Several Researches] http://www.cepii.fr/francgraph/doctravail/pdf/2002/dt02-08.pdf [Acceded on 16th march 2007] http://www.wikipedia.org/ [Several Researches] http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/textile/statistics.htm [Acceded on 23th march 2007] http://www.lemonde.fr [Several Researches] Textile EU 69,8 Bd $ - Bd $ 4,9 Bd $ 6,1 Bd $ 1,6 Bd $ 19,1 Bd $ 1,7 Bd $ ASIA 45,6 Bd $ AMERICA 14,5 Bd $ WORLD 203 Bd $ Clothing EU 99,8 Bd $ AMERICA 25,4 Bd $ - Bd $ 0,7 Bd $ 10,3 Bd $ 48,8 Bd $ 0,9 Bd $ 5 Bd $ ASIA 32,4 Bd $ WORLD 276 Bd $ Numbers in billion of dollars designate the flows intra-zone (circles) and inter-zone (arrows). [...]

[...] More recent events had repercussions too like the abrogation of the Agreement on Textile and Clothing (ATC) in 2005 which lead to the disappearing of quotas with China. This step which was included in the Doha Development Agenda round from the WTO agenda which started in 2001 and was supposed to be over in 2006, has really changed the structure of this market. As we can see on the documents on the following pages, the main winner of all these recent evolutions appears to be the China. Indeed, these decisions from the WTO have catalyzed the growth of the China in the clothing and textile sector. [...]

[...] Nevertheless, there are winners in the EU, even in the countries previously named. First, the consumers enjoy of lower prices and the reduction of the textile benefits primarily the poor, who are more likely to spend than to save the money accrued, and it provides a much more positive macroeconomic effect. So, free trade in textile will provide global competitive disciplines that will improve productivity and lower prices for consumers. Moreover, many enterprises (huge, big, medium and small) have obtained significant benefits both from the opening of new markets and from gaining access to resources (including human resources) that improve their productivity and profitability. [...]