Trade Facilitation: The Role of a WTO Agreement

Trade facilitation negotiations have been one of the more active topics in the Doha negotiations. In this paper noted trade scholar J. Michael Finger reviews and evaluates the various tabled proposals and discusses whether a WTO agreement would benefit the process of reform and capacity-building in developing countries – or rather interfere in a process that is already moving forward. Dr. Finger refutes the idea of creating legal obligations to financially assist trade facilitation and concludes that a plurilateral agreement under the WTO umbrella would be better than the current order.