GENEVA (Bloomberg) — World Trade Organization Director General Mike Moore warned that a recent surge in free-trade pacts between countries may be seen as an alternative to the global trading system.
Many of the WTO's 140 member governments have entered a spate of smaller-scale trade accords among themselves, or are pushing ahead with plans to do so following last December's failure in Seattle to start a round of market-opening talks.
The Geneva-based WTO estimates those agreements now cover as much as three-quarters of world trade, and market barriers are dropping from East Asia to Latin America. At least 20 regional free-trade pacts are now in place.
"There is a growing danger that the huge rise in bilateral and plurilateral trade deals could come to be seen as a substitute for multilateral liberalization rather than a complement to it," Moore said.