Asymmetric Trade Negotiations.

• Author: Hoadley, Stephen
• Position: Book review

ASYMMETRIC TRADE NEGOTIATIONS

Editors: Sanoussi Bilal, Philippe de Lombaerde and Dianna Tussle

Published by: Ashgate, Farnham, Surrey, UK, 2011,222pp, 55 [pounds sterling].

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Given that almost all of New Zealand's trade negotiations are with larger partners (only Brunei is smaller), this book on asymmetry and how to cope with it is timely.

The theme of this book is straightforward: small partners are always at a disadvantage in trade negotiations. While trade deals are constructed by offers and acceptances, in theory giving all parties equal opportunities to say yes or no, it is the larger partners that can afford to refuse to accept a particular trade-off. Resulting agreements reflect a set of bargains biased in favour of the powerful. Furthermore, each successive trade agreement sets the agendas and standards for subsequent negotiations, so the global trade regime increasingly reflects the preferences of the North, particularly the United States.

The WTO ostensibly provides a rules-based framework equally accessible to all members, small as well as large, and this is valued by New Zealand. But as Woolcock's chapter shows, this framework favours the players with more institutional resources and influence as well as extra-institutional options to engage, manipulate, or avoid WTO disciplines and dispute settlement processes. The WTO is coloured by what Woolcock calls the 'OECD Consensus', which appears to be a trade counterpart of 'the Washington Consensus' regarding international aid and loans.

As multilateralism has stalled, not least because at Cancun in 2003 leading members of the South such as Brazil and India and other G22 states have begun to resist, bilateralism has emerged among states of the North as the preferred mode of trade talks. But whatever biases infect multilateral institutions, they are less detrimental to the interests of small players than bilateral negotiations with big players. Not only can big players refuse to play except by their own rules but also they have begun loading the trade agenda with non-trade demands such as protection of foreign investment and intellectual property, curbing of government procurement, health, and welfare options, and imposition of environmental and labour standards. These latter strictures neutralise some of the comparative advantages enjoyed by the South (low labour costs...