When everyone is talking about the idea of reciprocal tariff blowing a death knell to most-favoured nation principle and multilateral rules, one would expect a fresh narrative from none other than Joost Pauwelyn along with Jennifer Hillman and Hervé Jouanjean.
In this essay in the IELP blog, they argue that the threat of reciprocal tariffs could be a boon to the multilateral system in the sense that they can re-invigorate the discussion on non-agricultural market access - in other words tariff concession negotiations could be re-ignited at the WTO to address the reciprocity problem.
Instead of purely bilateral discussions with (and retaliation threats against) the US, the EU and other major trading nations should coordinate a broad-based Article XXVIII re-negotiation process. If managed properly, this could, in effect, turn into the biggest tariff negotiation round since the creation of the WTO in 1994, with the potential to create a fairer and more enduring result.
What this essentially means that negotiations to re-work one's tariff concessions could be the unintended fallout of the present gloomy paradigm of reciprocal tariff reductions on a bilateral basis. Or even an alternative to bilateral trade agreements?
Feasible? Acceptable to the rest of the WTO membership? What about the single undertaking? What about linking tariff negotiations to agricultural and services trade negotiations?
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