‘The Right to Trade': A Mechanism for Revitalising Pro-Development WTO Negotiations?

Joseph Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton make ambitious and innovative proposals for revitalising and rebalancing the World Trade Organization in a new report for the Commonwealth Secretariat: The Right to Trade: Rethinking the Aid for Trade Agenda (this title is available as a free pdf ebook). They argue that, to make the global trading system fairer, developing countries should have a ‘right to trade’ and a ‘right to development’ enshrined in WTO rules and enforced through its dispute settlement mechanism. Making the global trading system fairer would, they contend, help ensure that international trade works for developing countries and would provide new impetus for negotiations. This issue of Commonwealth Trade Hot Topics sets out the core argument made by Stiglitz and Charlton, raises some challenges and makes suggestions on how their reform proposals might be taken forward.