Editorial | Pay attention to Ottawa's trade initiative

There isn't the sense that global trade matters are near the top of Jamaica's policy agenda, which they should be. In which regard, Kamina Johnson Smith, the foreign affairs and foreign trade minister, ought to have had her eyes trained last week on events in Ottawa.

Hosted by Canada's trade diversification minister, Jim Carr, ministers and officials from a dozen countries and the European Union discussed ideas for reforming the World Trade Organization (WTO). The United States and China, key protagonists in the wave of protections being stoked by America's Donald Trump, weren't among this group of self-described "like-minded" group of WTO members. They were not invited.

"We are setting the framework for a more constructive momentum around real reform," Carr said. "Starting small has allowed us to address problems head-on and quickly develop proposals."

Jamaica, in its own right, and as lead for the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on international trade negotiations, has an interest in the proposals to which Carr referred and, ultimately, how they are articulated as formal policy prescriptions. For, the priorities of the countries that met in Ottawa, including those that categorise themselves as developing, among them Kenya, Brazil and Mexico, are not necessarily the same as those of Jamaica and its CARICOM partners, even when the language is similar.

The Ottawa initiative is against the backdrop of Mr Trump's threatened wrecking ball against multilateralism, in furtherance of his America First philosophy of unilateralism and the risk that poses to the global order that has existed since the Second World War. None of the post-war institutions are more immediately vulnerable than the WTO.

Mr Trump has imposed tariffs on imports from China, who he accuses of not playing by the global trade rules, as well as sought to protect some domestic industries from global competition, even by key allies, with dubious claims of protecting national security. The victims retaliated.

The Americans have also gummed up the arrangements for dispute resolutions at the WTO by blocking the appointment of judges to appeal panels, which, despite ruling overwhelmingly in Washington's favour in complaints brought by the US, the Trump administration accuses of bias, and of formulating rules of their own, to the detriment of USA interests.

TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

Many countries support the need for WTO reform, especially in the face of the technological revolution of the last two decades that has radically reshaped the workings of global markets. There is also broad consensus that the Chinese are still to complete the opening of their market. Most people insist, though, that a multilateral trading system, exemplified by the WTO, provides the best opportunity for orderly trade that helps to drive internal economic growth and development.

Indeed, CARICOM countries, as their leaders asserted at the Montego Bay summit in July, believe, despite its shortcomings, that "an inclusive, rules-based and transparent multilateral trading system under the WTO" is in their best interest.

In this regard, Jamaica and the Community will welcome the assertion by the Ottawa group that issues of development, which stalled in the Doha Round, "must remain an integral part of our work".

"We need to explore how the development dimension, including special and differential treatment, can be best pursued in rule-making efforts," the group said in its communique. "Our officials will examine and develop concrete options for engagement to reinvigorate the negotiating function."

We don't necessarily expect Jamaica and CARICOM to crash the party when this group next meets in January, in some city not yet announced. But the Canadian promoters and rapporteurs, in the meantime, should be hearing our views. Mrs Johnson Smith must aggressively begin to engage the private sector to begin to formulate Jamaica's consensus on this and related issues.