UK Prime Minister Theresa May has called for an urgent and ambitious reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to ensure the universality of trade rules for all and to protect the system of global trade, which is currently under stress.
LONDON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th November, 2018) UK Prime Minister Theresa May has called for an urgent and ambitious reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to ensure the universality of trade rules for all and to protect the system of global trade, which is currently under stress.
"For nations to open up their markets to others, they need the confidence that everyone will play by the same rules. And today this global system is under real stress. A damaging trade war with spiralling tariffs is in no-one's interests. But we must be honest in identifying problems and do more to work together to fix them. So we need an ambitious and urgent process for reform of the World Trade Organisation," May said at the Lord Mayor's Banquet in London late on Monday.
According to May, it is necessary to analyze which WTO rules and principals are being respected and which ones need to be revised. The official also stressed the need to enhance the organization's transparency.
The UK prime minister also suggested that the organization should move with the times and develop new regulations taking into account the interests of online trade.
"For while services now account for 65 percent of global GDP, recent trade negotiations to deliver more ambitious trade in services have stalled. And while companies like Amazon and Alibaba have changed the nature of consumer behaviour, the World Trade Organisation has been struggling to remove barriers to e-commerce trade for almost two decades. So these reforms must ensure the rules themselves remain relevant to the modern economy," May said.
There have been calls in recent years to reform the 164-nation WTO, which has the power to settle international trade disputes. The voices demanding the organization's reforming have become even louder in light of the recent trade disputes provoked by the imposition of unilateral tariffs.
