GENEVA: The World Trade Organization said Monday that open trade alone was not enough to reduce inequalities between wealthy and developing nations and more was needed to help poorer countries.
The WTO’s 2024 report on global trade looked at the role that commerce has played to narrow the gap between economies since its creation in 1995.
“Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the report is its reaffirmation of trade’s transformative role in reducing poverty and creating shared prosperity,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in the foreword.
This conclusion, she added, runs “contrary to the currently fashionable notion that trade, and institutions like the WTO, have not been good for poverty or for poor countries, and are creating a more unequal world.”
“But the second biggest takeaway is that there is much more we can do to make trade and the WTO work better for economies and people left behind during the past 30 years of globalization,” Okonjo-Iweala said.
The report found that low- and middle-income economies tend to engage less in international trade, receive less foreign direct investment and depend more on commodities.
They also export fewer “complex products” and “trade with fewer partners,” the WTO said.
“Protectionism, the report demonstrates, is not an effective path to inclusiveness,” Okonjo-Iweala said, warning that it can raise production costs and invite “costly retaliation from disgruntled trading partners.”
WTO chief economist Ralph Ossa added: “Less trade will not promote inclusiveness, nor will trade alone.”
“True inclusiveness demands a comprehensive strategy — one that integrates open trade with supportive domestic policies and robust international cooperation,” Ossa said.
The report said domestic policies that are needed to make trade more inclusive include vocational training, unemployment benefits and “education for a more skilled and mobile workforce.”
It also called for “competition policy to ensure consumers benefit from lower prices, reliable infrastructure, and well-functioning financial markets.”
WTO says trade alone won’t bridge gap between economies
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WTO says trade alone won’t bridge gap between economies
- WTO’s 2024 report on global trade looked at role commerce has played to narrow gap between economies
Russia says foreign forces in Ukraine would be ‘legitimate targets’
- Moscow has repeatedly said it will not tolerate the presence in Ukraine of troops from Western countries
MOSCOW: Russia would regard the deployment of any foreign military forces or infrastructure in Ukraine as foreign intervention and treat those forces as legitimate targets, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday, citing Minister Sergei Lavrov.
The ministry’s comment, one of many it said were in response to questions put to Lavrov, also praised US President Donald Trump’s efforts at working for a resolution of the war and said he understood the fundamental reasons behind the conflict.
“The deployment of military units, facilities, warehouses, and other infrastructure of Western countries in Ukraine is unacceptable to us and will be regarded as foreign intervention posing a direct threat to Russia’s security,” the ministry said on its website.
It said Western countries — which have discussed a possible deployment to Ukraine to help secure any peace deal — had to understand “that all foreign military contingents, including German ones, if deployed in Ukraine, will become legitimate targets for the Russian Armed Forces.”
The United States has spearheaded efforts to hold talks aimed at ending the conflict in Ukraine and a second three-sided meeting with Russian and Ukrainian representatives is to take place this week in the United Arab Emirates.
The issue of ceding internationally recognized Ukrainian territory to Russia remains a major stumbling block. Kyiv rejects Russian calls for it to give up all of its Donbas region, including territory Moscow’s forces have not captured.
Moscow has repeatedly said it will not tolerate the presence in Ukraine of troops from Western countries.
The ministry said Moscow valued the “purposeful efforts” of the Trump administration in working toward a resolution and understanding Russia’s long-running concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion and its overtures to Ukraine.
It described Trump as “one of the few Western politicians who not only immediately refused to advance meaningless and destructive preconditions for starting a substantive dialogue with Moscow on the Ukrainian crisis, but also publicly spoke about its root causes.”
