Based in Geneva, Switzerland, Selina Jackson is the World Bank's Special Representative to the UN and the WTO.  She attended the WTO's 9th Ministerial Conference in Bali, Indonesia.  And on December 5, she led off the discussion at the Global Business Dialogue program in Bali on "Development and National Interests: Lessons from the Doha Round."

Trade is good for development.  That was the starting assumption of Ms. Jackson's presentation, which included a statement of the World Bank's current priorities, a review of trade and development initiatives since the launch of the Doha Round in November 2001, and a few remarks like today's featured quote.  Some of those easily fall under the heading of aspirational insights.

World Bank Goals. The World Bank has two large new goals.  One is to end extreme poverty by the year 2030.  The other is to promote shared prosperity.  The latter, as Ms. Jackson explained it, is to look at the bottom 40 percent "even in developed countries" with a view to ensuring that those groups benefit from development and development initiatives.  "Just as the World Bank is advocating for inclusive growth, I am wondering if the World Trade Organization can't do a little better job of advocating for inclusive trade policy," Ms. Jackson said.  This, she suggested, would mean going beyond the North-South divide that has plagued the WTO through the Doha Round negotiations  but which seems to be shifting towards something more constructive under the leadership of the WTO's new Director-General, Roberto Azevêdo. 

Developing Countries and Multilateralism.  Having praised Mr. Azevêdo for his inclusive approach - for ensuring that all WTO members were at the negotiating table and all voices heard - Ms. Jackson said, "The multilateral game is really the only game in which the developing countries will have a seat at the table."  The so-called mega-regionals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) are important, but they are not inclusive.  They leave the developing countries out.  These major bilateral negotiations are the leading edge of globalization, and, as Ms. Jackson put it, "Globalization has passed by many of the poorest countries."

Why?  Because, as Ms. Jackson explained, "Even with market access, many poor countries are not able to seize the opportunities of the global market place." 

Trade Facilitation.  A new Trade Facilitation Agreement is the major achievement of the Bali Ministerial.  As for the potential of that agreement, there is a video on the World Bank website which does an excellent job of explaining the benefits the world can expect from a trade facilitation agreement.  We'll return to that video in the comment section.  The point to note here is that when Ms. Jackson spoke on December 5, the deal was still not done nor could one say with certainty that it would be.  It was in that setting that Ms. Jackson talked about the negotiating dynamic that hobbled the trade facilitation negotiations for so long.

She described it this way.  On one side, there were the developing countries, who argued that they couldn't make commitments until they had assurances that assistance would be forthcoming.  On the other side were donors pointing to the fact that the assistance was already there.  "What I saw," she said, "was a lack of trust between the two camps."  If that was the bad news, the good news was that building trust seems to be Roberto Azevêdo's comparative advantage. 

Since Doha - Aid for Trade Etc.  Ms. Jackson did not rehearse the frustrations of the Doha Round, nor did she deny them, but she did offer a fresh perspective.  "I would argue that the last 12 years have been good for development,"  she said.  Exhibit A for that thesis was the Aid for Trade initiatives, which was launched in 2005. To quote from the WTO website:

And as Ms. Jackson explained, it has led to a 57 percent increase in trade related assistance to developing countries.  But it has done more than that.  It has encouraged developing countries to focus more on trade in their planning. It has made trade a more prominent part of the portfolios of donors like the World Bank, and it has enhanced cooperation and coordination in the development community.

The World Bank is the world's premier development agency.  So it is no wonder that the Bank's representative in Geneva, Ms. Jackson, should look at other institutions from the perspective of development.  In discussing the future of the WTO, Ms. Jackson said, "The WTO is not a development agency, nor should it be, [but] I would argue that development still should remain at the center of its work."
That of course raises the question, what does development mean?  Is it something the developing countries do to catch up?  Or is it something all countries need to do to advance?

A similar question surrounds the World Bank's two new goals, especially the second one of promoting shared prosperity.  Ms. Jackson was definite that the intention is to focus on the bottom 40 percent in every country.  And the discussion on the World Bank website tracks that explanation, though not perfectly.  Some passages refer to all countries.  Others seem to focus on the developing countries. 

For us, there is a touch of irony here.  It was developed countries primarily that created the GATT and the WTO, establishing rules for trade among themselves.  Today, the WTO has clear and important development objectives.  It's challenge now - and it's a tough one - is to avoid being so dominated by development issues as to lose its credibility as a place where the major countries can still advance their objectives through trade negotiations.

The World Bank's first loan was to post-War France, so its history is a little more complicated.  For the last several decades, however, the Bank's focus has clearly been on assistance to developing countries.  With its new shared prosperity goal and emphasis on the bottom 40 percent everywhere, it would appear that the World Bank is now engaged in an effort to increase the relevance of its policies to the politics of the developed world as well as the developing.

Finally, we mentioned the excellent Trade Facilitation video available on the World Bank's website.   It's called Making Trade Easier and one of the featured speakers is Evdokia Moise-Leeman, a senior trade policy analyst at the OECD.  Linking trade facilitation - that is moving goods into and out of a country with greater ease - to competitiveness, Ms. Moise-Leeman said, "We have to keep in mind that many productive activities in countries have a very high import content."