The Custom-House

Lamy wants to carry on

Pascal Lamy's term as Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) ends on August 31, next year.  He's now notified the WTO members that he wants reappointment (link includes a description of the selection process as well as a copy of Lamy's letter).  

The WTO's procedures for selecting a new Director-General called for Lamy to let the members know by the end of November if he wanted to seek reappointment.  Other candidates can still be nominated during December.  The selection process then runs through early 2009, but a new Director-General is supposed to be chosen no later than the end of May.

A recent article in Bridges suggested that other candidates might be deterred if Lamy wanted another term: Time to start looking for the next WTO DG?

Time to start looking for the next WTO DG?

 

Pascal Lamy, WTO Director-General.  Does he want another term?

The WTO is the most democratic of the world's multilateral economic organizations.  Pascal Lamy, the current Director-General, was selected in a wide-open contest in 2004-2005 (covered on this weblog: WTO DG Race: 2005). 

Now its time to decide who will fill the seat for the next term.  Does Lamy want it again, will there be a fight?  The new Bridges, from the International Centre for trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) reports:

Russia and the WTO

William Cooper goes over the issues raised for the U.S. by Russia's efforts to join the World Trade Organization: Russia’s Accession to the WTO (Congressional Research Service, January 7, 2008).  Here's the executive summary:

A Slew of New Reports on Globalization

Iana Dreyer (Global Conditions) surveys the new age cohort of annual year-end reports on globalization and world trade in her post Annual Christmas presents (Dec 8). 

She provides links to Foreign Policy's updated Globalization Index (and for comparison the last KOF Globalization Index from the Swiss Institute for Business Cycle Research), the German Marshall Fund's report on its September survey of attitudes towards globalization and trade in the U.S. and Europe, the WTO's recent trade report with its history multilateral trade agreements since WWII, and the report of the Warwick Commission on the way forward for multilateral trade.

Global Conditions was a year old on November 11.  Dreyer has just taken a job as an analyst in Brussels with the European Centre for International Political Economy.  Congratulations on both counts!! 

The WTO's 2007 World Trade Report is out

The WTO released its fifth annual World Trade Report yesterday.  These reports describe recent developments in international trade and include surveys of special topics.

How to use the WTO

Jonathan Dingel asks: What's the best scope for WTO negotiations?, (Trade Diversion, January 31).

Pascal Lamy will answer your questions

Pascal Lamy, the WTO's Director General, works hard to provide a human face to the organization.

The WTO web site shows 12 speeches by his predecessor in the first nine months of his term, from Sept 2002 through May 2003.  The site shows 26 by Lamy.  That's certainly a crude measure, which doesn't take account of the different background situations the two faced.   It does suggest an uptick in efforts to communicate the WTO message to a broader public.

Lamy has also been exploiting less traditional communication tools.  Next Friday he will be a special guest on Daniel Altman's new globalization blog: Next week's special guest: Pascal Lamy (June 9 - Altman is the International Herald Tribune's globalization correspondent and his new blog operates from the IHT website: Managing Globalization):

Why the WTO is so important to poor countries

Dipak Patel, the Zambian trade minister explains:

See and hear the WTO

The WTO offers webcasts of news events and training videos: WTO webcasting files are now downloadable.  (You can also view webcasts of the public sessions of the recent  Hong Kong Ministerial meetings. )

The introductory and training videos include: