Trade and the London Summit outcome

|Richard Baldwin |Print Email |
|4 April 2009 |Comment Republish |

|G20 leaders made a number of commitments on trade in their London Communiqué. This column argues that the anti-protection pledge is more credible than the one agreed in the Washington |
|Declaration. The commitment on the Doha Round, by contrast, was pitiful. |
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|The London Communiqué confirms that issues surrounding international trade have moved up the G20 agenda. The commitments made could have been much stronger, but I believe that what was agreed on|
|protectionism can be graded as “not bad”. On the Doha Round, the Summit’s pledge was pitiful – it should be graded “very sad”. Yet, given the current disarray in the US’s trade policymaking |
|machinery, it was perhaps the best that could have been accomplished. |
|What did they agree in London? |
|The commitments on trade fall into three basic categories: |
|Anti-protectionist pledges,