The Future of the Multilateral Trade System - Centre for Public Policy Symposium

9:00am, Monday 7th April, 2008

The Event

The Director of the Centre for Public Policy, Professor Brian Galligan, invites you to The Future of the Multilateral Trade System symposium, happening on Monday the 7th of April, 2008. The symposium will reflect on the key challenges facing the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and discuss the findings and recommendations of the Warwick Commission report on the Future of the Multilateral Trade System, which can be downloaded from http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/research/warwickcommission/.

Among the issues that the symposium will explore are:

• how to address the growing opposition to multilateral trade liberalization in many industrialized countries;
• how to manage the shift from a trade regime dominated by the US and the EU to one that includes China, India and Brazil;
• how to make WTO negotiations and rule-making more efficient and more fair in an organization of 151 members with diverse needs and interests;
• how to ensure that the WTO works in the interests of all its members, including the poorest and weakest; and
• how to reconcile the proliferation of preferential trade agreements with the multilateral trade system.

Speakers will reflect on these challenges and on the recommendations of the Warwick Commission report that proposes constructive yet pragmatic ways to move the system of global trade governance forward, and tries to get beyond the problems that have plagued the Doha Development Round. The symposium will feature presentations from international trade experts drawn from a range of disciplines including economics, political science, law and philosophy. 

The Speakers (click on hyperlinked title to download PDF notes)

Overview of Warwick Commission Report

Dr Patrick Low
World Trade Organisation

Patrick Low is Chief Economist (Director of Economic Research and Statistics) at the World Trade Organization. He was first appointed Chief Economist in May 1997 and then served as Director- General Mike Moore’s Chief of Staff from September 1999 to December 2001, after which he returned to his previous post of Chief Economist. From 1995-1997 he was in the WTO’s Trade in Services Division. He worked from 1990-94 in the World Bank’s research complex (International Trade Division). Prior to that, he taught at El Colegio de México in Mexico City and worked as a consultant, from 1987-90. From 1980-87, Patrick worked at the GATT Secretariat in Geneva. He has written widely on a range of trade policy issues.

Professor Richard Higgott
Warwick University, UK

Richard Higgott is Pro Vice Chancellor and has been Professor of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick since February 1996. He was Foundation Director of the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation and is now Senior Scientist and Director of the European Union Framework 6 Network of Excellence on Global Governance, Regionalism and Regulation (GARNET). Previous chair level appointments have been held at the University of Manchester and in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University, where he was Director of Graduate Studies in Foreign Affairs and Trade. He was a member of the Australian Government’s Trade Negotiation Advisory Group during the Uruguay Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations. He is active in the work of the Council for Asia Europe Cooperation and the Evian Group. He is editor of The Pacific Review. He is the author/editor of some 16 books or monographs and 100 or so refereed articles and book chapters in the areas of international politics and development studies.

Professor Ann Capling
University of Melbourne

Ann Capling was born and educated in Canada and completed her PhD at the University of Toronto in 1991. She joined the Department of Political Science at the University of Melbourne in 1993. She has served in a number of leadership roles in the Melbourne Arts Faculty including Associate Dean, Academic Programs (2001-03); Head of Department of Political Science (2005-06); Director, Centre for Public Policy (2007); and Associate Dean, Graduate Studies (2008- ). Ann is currently Vice President of the Australian Political Studies Association (APSA), is on the editorial board of Global Governance, and in 2007 was a Member of the Warwick Commission on the Future of the Multilateral Trade System, whose report can be downloaded from http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/research/warwickcommission/.

The Disjunction Between the Economics of Trade and Trade Negotiations

Professor Peter Lloyd
University of Melbourne

Professor Peter John Lloyd is Emeritus Professor of the University of Melbourne. He has a B. A and an M. A. (First Class Honours) from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand and a Ph. D. from Duke University in the United States of America. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. His main areas of specialisation are international economics and Asian economics and microeconomics in general. He has been a consultant to the OECD, the WTO, UNCTAD and a number of government departments and authorities in Australia and New Zealand. He was the joint editor of the Journal of the Economic Society of Australia, The Economic Record, for five years and has served on numerous committees for the Economic Society, the International Economic Association, the Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia and other bodies. He is an author or an editor of ten books and has written nine monographs and over one hundred articles in refereed journals or chapters in books. He was Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Commerce at the University of Melbourne from 1988 to 1993.

Why WTO Must Abandon the Single Undertaking in Favour of Critical Mass Negotiations

Professor Andrew Stoler
University of Adelaide

Andrew L. Stoler is the Executive Director of the Institute for International Trade and holds the title of adjunct Professor of International Trade at the University of Adelaide. Mr. Stoler is a Governor of the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia and sits on the Advisory Board of the European Centre for International Political Economy, the Advisory Board of Stanford University’s GATT Digital Library, and is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Shanghai WTO Affairs Consultation Centre and a Senior Advisor to the Shenzhen WTO Affairs Centre. Previously, he served for two years on the Australian Foreign Minister’s Aid Advisory Council. In February 2008, Mr. Stoler was awarded the Order of Merit by the President of Ukraine in recognition for his service as Chairman of the Working Party on Ukraine's accession to the WTO. Mr. Stoler served as Deputy Director-General of the Geneva-based World Trade Organization (1999-2002) and as Deputy Permanent Representative of the United States to the GATT and WTO (1989-1999). Previously, as a senior official of the Office of the United States Trade Representative, Executive Office of the President (Washington, DC) he also served as Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Europe and the Mediterranean and as Director for Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Andrew Stoler holds an MBA in International Business from George Washington University and a BSFS in International Economic Affairs from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He is fluent in French and has a working command of Spanish.

Using Aid for Trade to Secure the Benefit of Trade Reform

Professor Simon Evenett
University of St Gallen, Switzerland

Simon Evenett is Professor of International Trade and Economic Development at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. In addition to his research into the determinants of international commercial flows, Professor Evenett is particularly interested in the relationships between international trade policy, national competition law and policy, and economic development. Professor Evenett has been a (non-resident) Senior Fellow of the Economic Studies Programme in the Brookings Institution, Washington, DC. Previously, he has taught at Oxford University and Rutgers University as well as serving twice as a World Bank official.

Combining Justice with Efficiency: The Multilateral Trade Regime and the Warwick Commission Report

Professor Cecilia Albin
University of Uppsala, Sweden

Cecilia Albin is Professor of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, Sweden. Educated at the Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities in the US, she was previously on the faculty at Cambridge University and Reading University in the UK. She has written extensively on international negotiations, and justice and fairness issues, among other subjects. Current research explores how the treatment of justice issues in the negotiation process and in negotiated agreements affects the implementation and durability of agreements over time.

Preferentialism and the Multilateral Trade System

Dr Heribert Dieter
German Institute for International and Security Affairs

Heribert Dieter has been an adjunct professor (Privatdozent) at the Free University of Berlin since 2005. He works as Senior Fellow in the Research Unit Global Issues at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Berlin. Since 2000, he has also been Associate Fellow, Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick. Dr Dieter has worked on a broad range of issues related to the development of the world economy. Specifically, he has written about regional integration in the Asia-Pacific, Africa and Central Asia, monetary regionalism and the international financial system. His current research focus is on the further development of globalisation, the development of monetary regionalism in Asia and other parts of the world and on the future of the global trading system, which appears to be undermined by the mushrooming of bilateral trade agreements.

Operationalising Special and Differential Treatment

Dr Andrew Mitchell
University of Melbourne

Dr Andrew Mitchell is a Senior Lecturer at Melbourne Law School. He has studied law at the University of Melbourne, Harvard Law School, and Cambridge University. In 2007, following a nomination by the Australian government, the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body added him to the indicative list of governmental and non-governmental panelists to hear WTO disputes. Later this year he will take up a two month appointment as the Scholar-in-Residence at the International Arbitration Group of WilmerHale in London. Andrew was previously a Solicitor with Allens Arthur Robinson (formerly Arthur Robinson & Hedderwicks) in Australia, and he worked briefly at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York. He has also worked in the Trade Directorate of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Intellectual Property Division of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the Legal Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He was a Consultant to the IMF in Geneva from 2003 to 2005. In addition to his Melbourne teaching, Andrew has taught WTO law to undergraduate and postgraduate students at Bond University, Monash University, and the University of Western Ontario, and to Australian and overseas government officials at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the International Development Law Organization respectively. Andrew also consults for the private sector and international organisations. Andrew has published in numerous journals and books on areas including WTO law, international law, international humanitarian law, and constitutional law. He compiled, edited and contributed to Challenges and Prospects for the WTO, a book published by Cameron May in 2005. His monograph Legal Principles in WTO Disputes will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2008.

and Dr Tania Voon
University of Melbourne

Dr Tania Voon is a Senior Lecturer at Melbourne Law School and a former Legal Officer of the Appellate Body Secretariat of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In 2007, she also worked as a consultant to Telstra and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and was nominated by Australia and approved by the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body for inclusion on the Indicative List of Governmental and Non-Governmental Panelists. Tania has previously practised law with Mallesons Stephen Jaques and the Australian Government Solicitor, worked for the United Nations in New York and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris, and taught law at Monash University, Bond University, and the University of Western Ontario. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge and her Master of Laws at Harvard Law School. Tania recently authored Cultural Products and the World Trade Organization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) and has published numerous articles in leading journals on WTO law and public international law more generally.

What makes critical mass agreements fissile or fusional?

Peter Gallagher
Inquit Pty Ltd

Peter Gallagher is a leading business and public policy analyst specializing in international trade. He is a globally published author of 'plain language' books on legal and economic aspects of international trade. He is also an educator and conference facilitator with extensive cross-cultural experience and an experienced digital media author and producer (audio, web, print-ready).

The Venue

This event will be held at the Melbourne Business School, 200 Leicester Street, Carlton. For more information on the venue, please click here.

The Program

Click here to download the event program.

Registration

Registration for this event is $275 (inc GST) which included morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea. Please click here to download a registration form.