 So, we have a good chunk of time to have a very useful conversation about these issues. As we move into that, just to set the scene a little bit and also to reflect a little bit back on our three presentations, what we try to do is present texture and colour to the quagmire of the situation, the quagmire that the WTO finds itself in. And we've tried to do this in a way that extends the discussion beyond just a political economy of trade. Our presentations have been excellent, I'm sure you'll agree. But I'd like the panellists to think about one thing and I will ask them to give their views and that is, where do we go from here? You know, Alan talked about borders and we're now moving into a world order characterised by the erection of borders, something that in my lifetime reverses a trend. Whether it's Donald Trump's first principle of immigration where a nation needs borders to be a nation and a fence on the southern border is essential or whether it's the Calais superfence, the Bulgarian superfence, whatever. We are in a world of increasing borders. The other comment I'd like to throw into the discussion is that the task of reforming an institution is a difficult one. We know historically that international institutions are long lived. Very few of them cease to exist. The League of Nations is an anomaly in that. But we also know that they evolve in path dependent ways. Their Vaberian trajectories are one of increasing bureaucratisation but actually something that continues to preserve an existing way of functioning rather than something imaginative and innovative which takes an institution down a particularly different path. And I think we can probably point to maybe one or two institutions that buck that trend but they have been down to I think the astute engineering of key executive heads and I have the ILO in mind actually as an institution that's consistently tried to change what it does over a period of time to make itself relevant whether it succeeded or not is up to you to judge. But this is something that is not common among international institutions. So I invite your questions and comments. Please identify yourselves if you could as you make your comment. I will also ask our panellists to reflect on where we go from here and I look forward to the discussion. OK, I'm going to take them two at a time. So Deepak, if we can begin with you please. OK, thank you panellists for neat, nice presentations. I have a question which could be addressed to any of them or all of them which situates the problem they addressed in a longer time horizon and in a wider context, all right. Now, there has been a persistent and mounting crisis in the multilateral trading system long before the financial crisis surfaced in the United States and the great recession that followed in its aftermath, all right. And the fact that recovery is slow, uneven and fragile, almost everywhere, with the exception of the United States and perhaps Japan, even so recovery in trade is much slower than recovery in output and employment. Now, there is a striking asymmetry between the elasticity of trade with respect to output growth. In periods of boom, trade grew much faster than output. But in periods of bust, it is recovering much more slowly than output is or even employment is. Now, this is one juxtaposition that compounds the problem of rescuing the multilateral trading system from what you said is a quagmire or an impasse or a mess. And each of the panelists presented us a sketch, one picture of that impasse. Now, if we were to juxtapose upon this dual world a third dimension and that is the re-assertion of, you know, economies became global but politics remain national. And for a while, the economics of globalization dominated the politics of nationalism but we are getting increasingly, particularly in the European Union, member countries, a re-assertion of national identities. So it's not just Mr. Trump in the United States, it's almost everywhere. The UK, France, you see much more acute versions in Hungary and Poland who would like the UK to be kept out of a single market but want all Poles who migrated to the UK to have the right to stay there. Now, so my question to the panelists is if we think somewhat longer and we think somewhat bigger, the crisis in the WTO or the multilateral trading system is now much deeper than the institutional crisis because it is part of a much bigger picture. And it's sort of caught in a pincer movement between the slow and fragile recovery in the world economy which is having a disproportionate impact on international trade flows and a re-assertion of national identities, ironically enough, the backlash against globalization or markets and globalization has come from the far right in politics and not from the left. So it puts that trading system even more at risk. So could we try and put this together in your reflections a little bit? I have another question but I will return to it later in fairness too. Thank you Deepak for giving everyone a very simple question to answer. Madam, can I ask you to give your question please? It's the lady on the third row. Thank you. So my name is G. Maulani. I'm at the Institute of Rural Management in Anand in India. My question is about agricultural subsidies and I started framing it when Kristian was speaking about the rising powers of countries like India and Brazil. India ran into a huge trouble recently with our Food Security Act where they wanted to give very free, almost cheap food to the poor and it came up in the WTO as violating the AMS, your aggregate measurements about. And it didn't go anywhere till as far as I could follow the debate. What happened to it later on? I don't know. So my question is to what extent, what happened to that of course? And this whole issue of rising powers, whether India, China and all these other countries which are rising are really able to negotiate anything in the context of the hegemony. Still I would think of the US and the Western countries. And where are we going from here given all that Deepak Ji was talking about and the strength of the powers and the stronger regional context. Thank you. If you could pass the microphone down to this gentleman here, that would be great. And that will be the end of the first round of questions. I'll then move around to those of you who also indicated. Thank you very much. My name is Dona Dimari from Rappoa, Tanzania. I have two short questions to Fazil, especially I was very interested in his discussion. The first question relates to the mega trade negotiation between the United States and the EU. What do you think will, if it indeed goes through and successfully, what effect will that have on the producers from the ACP countries? The second one is the recently the East African community postponed the decision to sign the EPAS with the EU. What will be your advice to the EAC when the time comes for them to decide whether to sign the EPAS or not? Thank you. Thank you. So three very important interventions. I'm going to ask all three of you to speak to the questions that you feel most comfortable with. But also to ask all of you to speak to DPAC's question, actually. Kristin, you might want to pick up food security on top of that and Fazil may be the mega regional question. But Alan, would you like to kick us off, please? Oh, thank you. Yes. Where to from here since you posed the question, Rodin? It's very difficult to know. The presumption that things can only get better, things going to get more globalized and so on are clearly mistaken. And the reason for saying that is it seems to me that for some of us who have views about how the world economy should be run, actually have not been as active as we should have been. One in trying to explain what it offers and two perhaps in recognizing that not everybody gains at all or at least not everybody gains to the same extent. So it seems to me that what we do need to do is actually to try and address much more directly the sort of the rhetoric of a system that has been magnificently successful for 70 years. And, you know, in Britain we've bounced our way out of the EU largely because no government could ever bring itself to say anything nice about the EU. We just blamed all the nasty things on the EU. Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen can't bring themselves to say anything nice about foreigners or the world economy. They blame everything on the foreigners and the world economy. Both are deeply, deeply mistaken views. And so I think it behoves anyone who believes that by and large the huge reduction in poverty, proportion and actual reductions in poverty in absolute numbers that we've achieved over the last 50 years or so is worthwhile. Anyone who believes that China's ability to export so strongly to the world has not been the most wonderful boon for 1.2 billion Chinese that you could imagine, we need to be saying so. What else can we do? I mean hopefully if we say and we explain, we gradually have some political effect. What I am profoundly persuaded of is we cannot pretend that what ultimately are rather unhelpful and silly positions are in fact good because that's the way the politics are going. We have to just accept that sometimes our views do not prevail. We do not necessarily then have to change our views. Now coming to Deepak's question, I mean I agree almost entirely with your statement Deepak. The crisis is much larger than just the financial crisis and indeed Kirsten's history, your reminders that it started back then. And again I think the issue is partly one that we haven't explained what's going on. For myself I'm not very concerned that trade isn't growing as fast as GDP. The huge boom in trade relative to GDP that we saw over the last 50 years was quite substantially helped by logistical developments, containerization and so on. And was also very obviously helped by the fact that we have global value chains again. We are shipping, the growth of trade has mostly been in intermediate goods. Trade is measured as a gross measure. All right, you ship a good in, it counts as an import, you screw it into something else and ship it out, it counts as an export. That's been counted twice in trade data. GDP is a net measure, you net out the value of those inputs. And so it's not surprising that when you move to a production system that involves more transfer of intermediate goods both ways that the trade to GDP ratio rises. So while I don't in any way want to deny that we need to be watching what's happening in the global trade alert, Simon, even its outfit has identified plenty of restrictions on trade that I think must be having an effect on the numbers. We shouldn't conclude that it is inevitable that the growth rate of trade should be 30, 40, 50% higher than the growth rate of GDP. How do we address the longer term crisis? Again, it seems to me it's incumbent on ask people like us basically to try and get the rhetoric right first of all. Well, get the analysis, do the analysis, but then be prepared to tell people what we think and accept that indeed not everything is clear and that we might indeed disagree with each other. I don't think in terms of sort of the WTO and so on, it seems to me again that in a sense what we need to do is to recognize that trade is a pretty rough old business. The idea that every single round should always close in success, you know, maybe it's over optimistic and just take the knock on the Doha round and say, you know what, that doesn't invalidate the sorts of things that we were trying to do. There are still trade restrictions that are not very helpful and we ought to get back and keep trying. I attended a meeting of senior civil servants about six months ago where the British government has a periodic strategic exercise and I was invited to a meeting about the long run future of trade. I made a rather, it turns out, prescient but unpleasant joke. I said, well, Britain will vote for Brexit and then the rest of the world will see how important trade is. We take a hit for the rest of the community and I do think it's possible that if this Brexit business turns out to be pretty uncomfortable, there may be a number of people say, you know what, maybe there is something worth preserving here. And if so, I hope we'll say so. Wow, thank you, Ellen. Kristen, can I invite you to say your responses, please? Maybe I'll start with a where do we go from here question. I think the objective of trying to secure, you know, some kind of international trade agreement, whether the WTR elsewhere that, you know, contains a real significant development component is increasingly difficult and specifically because of the U.S. I think in the U.S. there's a strong sense of a country under threat economically, also politically. And that makes the U.S. extremely unwilling to agree to any kind of agreement that's going to, you know, significantly advance the interest of developing countries. And I think a big factor in this is the rising anti-trade sentiment in the U.S. as well. And this relates to Deepak's question and this issue of the reassertion of national identities, national interests and sort of anti-globalization sentiments. And in the U.S. I think this is, you know, this is a result of policies over the past 30 years, much more so than trade. But there is a genuine sense of economic precariousness that's extremely widespread in the U.S. You know, stagnant or declining real wages, increasing precarity of employment. And this is what's giving rise to these real anti-trade sentiments. So these are types of things that would need to be addressed in the U.S. by domestic redistributive policies. These aren't something that can be tackled through international agreements, but they're certainly something that would impede any future international trade agreements. Turning to the issue of agriculture subsidies. Yes, so India had this massive food security program that it launched providing subsidized food to 800 million people in the country. And as a result of this massive subsidization, this food stock holding buying program was potentially in danger of reaching its WTO commitments. So what's happened on that issue is at Bali it was able to negotiate sort of a temporary exemption to enable it to continue its food security program until some kind of permanent solution can be reached. But this is a problem that goes well beyond India. One of the other dramatic changes we've seen at the WTO over the course of particularly since about 2008 onwards is a dramatic increase in emerging economy agriculture subsidies. Not just India, but also China, Indonesia, many other emerging economies. And so many of these countries are now in danger of potentially breaching their WTO commitments, partly because of the nature of the Uruguay Round. This is one of those asymmetries built into the international trading systems that ironically developing countries were subject to essentially lower limits on agriculture subsidies than the rich countries. So many emerging economies are several emerging economies are in danger now reaching their commitments. So this has emerged as one of the hot button negotiating items at the WTO now in sort of the post-doha round world where they're trying to see if they can reach agreement on smaller issues. This is one of the key ones that's been identified and it's been identified as a priority objective for the upcoming ministerial meeting next year. But here it's again primarily come down to a conflict between the U.S. and China. So the U.S. just took a case against China last week on its agriculture domestic support. And in terms of the negotiations themselves, the U.S. now is refusing to take any action in reducing its agriculture subsidies if China and the other emerging economies don't commit to do the same thing. So partly this is the U.S. using this as an excuse not to take action on its own subsidies but not entirely. It does have some genuine competitive concerns about the subsidies that are being provided in these countries as well. So China, India, the other emerging economies make the case that there's something qualitatively different about their agriculture support, that it's being used to address rural development concerns, the massive rural poverty that these countries face. But many on the other side argue ultimately a subsidy is a subsidy and it has the same effect on global markets, on poor producers in other developing countries, whether that subsidy is coming from China or it's coming from the U.S. So I think this is probably the most contentious issue right now in WTO negotiations. And one issue of potential concern is that because of this impasse between the U.S. and China, where China is refusing to take action on subsidies because it sees that as something that was not part of the Doha round, something that is really the U.S. trying to go beyond the promises that were made in the past. So China has refused to budge on agriculture domestic support. So you have again this U.S.-China impasse and the result is that other developing countries who are negatively affected by these subsidies are finding themselves sort of the losers in this larger game. So the cotton four countries who have been pushing for an agreement to lower cotton subsidies are facing great resistance now. That's basically impossible because of this U.S.-China impasse and the refusal of both countries to try to address the subsidies issue. So this is the concern about these larger tensions between the new and old powers. What are the implications for the rest of the developing world? And it's potentially quite negative. Thanks. Thank you, Kristin. So geopolitics with the WTO. Faisal, an appropriate moment for you to come in. Thanks. Okay. Well, I'll venture to try and address Deepak's question, which is the big question. I mean, the more I think about it from my experience in the WTO, the more it's clear to me that the solutions to the crisis in the WTO are not in the WTO. And the reason for this is, you know, actually the U.S. has said this many times, that the crisis or the impasse in the WTO is not technical. They say it's political. So I've written about this, I've quoted them many times. They have said this repeatedly. So what they say, they say that they want to level the playing field. Actually, everyone in the United States says this. I have to read the newspapers. So what do we say? And I'm speaking for developing countries. We say we want to level the playing field. So the question is, you know, and I've had, I'm good friends with the U.S. ambassador. I've had many glasses of wine, chatted a lot. And it's clear to me that, you know, like Nelson Mandela said, we have to be able to put both ideas in your head. Their concern and ours. Because theirs is a genuine concern. It reflects the reality. By the way, it's not only in the U.S. what the British referendum shows. You know, those sentiments are there too. And in Europe and in many parts of the developed world. So we have this. But, you know, this is not something that should surprise us. Because in the last few years, we had many people analyzing the global economy. And they're saying that, you know, inequality is the big issue. Not only between developed and developing countries, but in the developed world. And so we have to take this on board. Now the problem with this global value change thing that has, you know, analysis, which by the way, there's a massive literature. You just Google it, global value change. It's on everything. OECD, WTO, World Bank, IMF. This is a partial analysis. It's not a reflection of the nature of the global economy. And I think that we need to get a better analysis. What's going on in the global economy? What are the global challenges? We have to integrate different types of analysis. And from that it seems to me that, you know, we have to then build some parameters for what kind of multilateral system, a rules-based system, can exist. So I like the book, you know, Danny Roderick wrote a book called The Paradox of Globalization, which he says, look, you know, you can't have both. You can't have democracy and have deep rules at the top. Because rules by their very nature, they take away sovereignty. Global rules take away sovereignty. Democracy tries to keep sovereignty. Because you don't want, you know, you take away policy space if you have too much rules on this. So there's a paradox between the two. So you've got to try and get a balance between the two. And it seems to me once we get that sort of understanding about what the WTO can do, because the WTO nowadays is not so much about goods. When we talk about liberalization, we think about goods. Actually what the US is going for, plus 30 issues in this TPP and TTIP, is rules at the border. Actually it's what they call behind the border rules. That's rules on investment, on competition, on intellectual property, on, you know, government procurement, on state, on enterprises, on everything that a government normally does its business on, all its policies. And it seems to me that, you know, that is, that's what the US says is leveling the playing field. The developing countries actually need policy space to, you know, ensure that we industrialize, that we develop. So there's a tension between those two things. It's deeply political. It's not just about, you know, a few, you know, commodities that you're trading across the border. So that's really the essence, it seems to me, the underlying, you know, tension that exists in the system. And I think we need a better analysis of the global economy and we need a better analysis of what we need, you know, the multilateral system to do. So that's my check on Deepak's question. On the issue of the mega-regionals, well, I mean, I was thinking of this question that a brother from Tanzania asked on the plane, actually, mega-regionals. Well, I think there are three things, you know, the impacts that it could have on Africa. There's marginalization. And I feel very strongly about this, that, you know, when people talk about plurilaterals and all sorts of ways of doing things in the WTO that exclude the majority of developing countries, I think it's totally wrong, morally wrong, and I think it's anti-developmental. So, you know, if you take Amartya Sen's definition of development, it includes participation. And what this is going to do is the mega-regionals, I mean, in any case, the intention of the mega-regionals, very clear, create new rules for the world and then go and impose it on the rest. And like the Tokyo Round, you know, when they created these codes, there were rules of few countries created and then after that they multilateralized it, which means they imposed it on the rest, to put it more starkly. That's the intention of the mega-regionals at the moment. And so this will undermine Africa's participation. It will have no say in those rules, but then in the end it will have to accept them. The second is erosion of preferences. So at the moment, you know, the preferences are important for Africa. The United States just agreed to extend the African Growth and Opportunity Act by 10 years. And there are countries who are benefiting from it and it does work. And it does need, of course, in the case of AGOA, it needs to be extended. It needs, you know, there are a lot of other things that need to go along with it, but it is important. And so what will happen with the mega-regionals, you know, accessed by Africa into the United States, will be eroded. So they will lose. The third, I think, is the threat of the so-called gold standard that the U.S. will create with the mega-regionals. They will be imposed. And they will then have the effect of removing policy space for African countries. So that's what I think the dangers are. The issue of the EPA is, well, South Africa has signed an EPA with the European Union, but hardly anyone else has. Now, let me tell you the irony of this EPA story. In the year 2000, the European Union initiated a negotiation to create these EPAs and they agreed what they decided to do away with the Loma Convention. The argument was that members of the WTO, you know, they don't like these preferential trade agreements anymore, and it is illegal in terms of Article 24 of the GATT. But you know, the irony is that was in the year 2000 and the European Union started the negotiations to create these EPAs, which means basically free trade agreements between a big power like the European Union, small countries like Mozambique, Malawi, and others. At the same time in the year 2000, the United States Clinton, President Clinton, started and launched the African Growth and Opportunity Act, a one-way preferential deal between Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and the United States. One of the finest things that Clinton did, interestingly, that President Bush supported. And Obama has now given it another life, ten years' life. Fantastic. So nobody in the WTO, I've been there more than ten years and I've been in meetings with ambassadors from all the countries. I've asked the ambassadors who would oppose a preferential trade agreement between Africa and the European Union, not a single one. Not China, not India, not Brazil. And not the United States, but I asked the US ambassador and he said, how could we do that? We already have a go-up. Why would we oppose preferences with Africa? We have a go-up already and we've asked, each time it came up, because it has to come up in the WTO, it has come up. Well, there were a few issues, but it passed the membership. So that was actually a spurious basis for its launching, the EPA negotiations. It has caused immense damage for the European Union in Africa. And the main reason for that is too early. You know, these countries are not even trading. They don't have the capacity. And then you want to impose a free trade agreement, not only on goods, but also on services and then also on rules, well before it's time. So that's what I think of the EPAs. Thanks. Thank you, Faizal. We have quite a collection of questions. I know that you're going to push my fellow panelists very hard. If you can please identify yourself, that would be great. As a gentleman over there, I think had a question. Then Roger, you, there's a gentleman at the back, and then I'll hold that there for a moment. I've got three more, which will be Barry, the gentleman there, and then Richard. Yes, thank you. Antonio da Costa from Brazil. Most of my questions to a certain extent have been addressed. I was curious, nevertheless, the impression that I have of mega-trade agreements is that they are involving rather than progressing, in any sense. And the reaction, which is local and national, is very strong, keep reading the news. So I was wondering if you could, any of the panelists could address how they see the perspectives of this big trade deals, Pacific and Atlantic, both going forward, and what would be the impact if they do to the WTO regime. The second question, again, to anyone who wants to answer, is that, but I imagine to a certain extent, it will be, again, addressed today at 4.30, is that I have a strong feeling that one of the issues with the WTO is that we have dealt with it, and it's part of the logic of international organizations to a certain extent that the chairman actually addressed. It has been the link to discussions on changing of IMF, World Bank, Bretton Woods institutions in general. And the central point, I think, is one that, again, some of the emerging powers like Brazil have addressed, which is a process of democratization of these institutions, allowing therefore for a stronger voice of developing countries within those institutions in pursuing certain goals. It's not to question the liberal order, whatever that means, I'm not so sure what it means, but rather bringing in strongly this component of democratization of these institutions and therefore allowing a stronger voice for developing countries. So I wonder if you could address that. And finally, a small question to the chairman, because I was curious and I heard that. I hope I understood correctly. You said that there would be issues with rules of origin from seabed exploration. I hope that's what I heard. As I have been involved for over four years with the seabed authority, I was curious to understand exactly where this comes from because we're not even near marketing any of the things that we're taking out of the sea at all and we're taking very few. So the question then is how would we do? Because actually the seabed regime is a very interesting regime because actually you're trading global goods, which is a very interesting thing that we haven't seen yet. We will get to see, but it is a global commons being explored and therefore a global good. Those are my questions. Thank you. That's a very easy thing for me to answer. Actually, it was about 50 years in the future we might collide with rules of origin and law of the seas, but maybe we can talk about that afterwards. Roger, can I invite you to speak? I'm very sorry to run you across the room. Our next question is all the way over here. This is a kind of workout session in the middle of a thing. Thank you. I have a direct question for Faisal. Faisal, it's really interesting to be in the room with somebody who's in the room with the trade negotiators or been in the room with the trade negotiators and coming from a middle-sized power I want to know what it's really like experientially. Are the real problems when you're, for example, confronted with the big, big delegations like the US and EU people? Are they the complexity of the issues and the size of the challenges? Or is it that basically you're up against a hugely larger specialized team? And coming from South Africa you're relatively better off than many of your African fellow negotiators. What's it really like in those situations? And is it just that there are too few of you and you're up against these ultra-well-trained huge delegations? Is it the complexity and weight of the issues that's the difficult thing? Thank you, Roger. Our final question from this round is the gentleman at the back in the white shirt. While you complete your work out, I might add that Faisal is a connoisseur of fine wine, Roger. So if he doesn't give you what you want now, perhaps you can... Thank you. Andy Sunder from Keynes College London. So I have two questions. One is relatively simple. One is more complicated. I'm going to say a bit more about the tier of emerging economies below the bricks. Indonesia has mentioned, but of course there's 20 or so other countries that are pretty fit into that group. And that's a much bigger group than the bricks alone. And I wondered how important or what role you might see and at what role you've seen those groups of countries playing. And then the second country, I was thinking some more just about the kind of anti-globalization backlash. So in the UK the narrative seems to be Brexit was about the marginalized voting against globalization. But that doesn't really explain the millions of prosperous pensioners in the south that voted for Brexit. And so I wonder if the members of the panel think about this. If you were running a referendum campaign in the next five years in an EU country on EU exit for another country, how would you try and frame the narrative? In the UK, the narrative of remain was framed around trying to scare people into voting for remain. And there was a non-stop wheeling out of economists, economist experts. And that clever people telling us what to think really, really seemed to get people's backs up. And so I wonder if you were running one of these kind of referendum campaigns, how would you frame that vote? And I'm not convinced that marginalization explains it. And I'm not convinced 70 million people in Britain are stupid. So 52% of the population, although 28% didn't even vote. So there's a substantial proportion of population didn't vote. But still there's 15 million people who are somehow convinced. So I'm interested in your take on that. Thank you. Thank you. So lessons clearly for the Dutch government as we move forward with this. Kristen, perhaps I could begin with you. Then move to Fazel and then to Alan. Is this going to be the last round? No, there'll be one more round and you'll have your question, Richard. Don't worry. So to start with a question about RTAs, I think I'll just speak about TPP in particular. I think TPP is going to have an extraordinarily difficult time passing in the US. Both presidential candidates have come out of a position it's possible that Hillary Clinton might change her view if ultimately elected. But it would still be extremely difficult to get it through Congress. There was talk about trying to pass it in a lame duck session after the November elections. Now it looks like that's not even viewed as feasible. So I think although the agreement has been negotiated and agreed, I think ratification in the US is the chances are really slim at this point. The issue of democratization of these international institutions, I think that's definitely exactly what we've seen at the WTO, the rise of Brazil, India, China, South Africa, some of the other second tier emerging economies have dramatically changed the dynamic within the institution and they have made it a much more equitable institution in terms of the negotiations. They've really served to write some of the imbalance between the developed and the developing world. The problem though is that ironically I think the result of the WTO has been that that's effectively broken that institution. The core function of the WTO, that negotiating function has broken down directly as a result of these power shifts. So the fact you have a more democratic, more equitable institution, that negotiating function can no longer operate. And just on this question of the second tier emerging powers, I think it varies very much state by state. So certain countries, Indonesia, the Philippines have been particularly active, Argentina as another. They've played quite a role in the negotiations, sometimes leading or being involved in some of these coalitions. Their role has been sort of secondary compared to the core powers, particularly Brazil, India and China. But the weight that they've been able to add and also some of their technical capacity as well in some of these issues has been important. Thank you. So I think the one question was the mega regionals and what will happen to the WTO? Well we don't know, but what we do know now is that the US has a clear intention to once agreed and once ratified to then impose the mega regionals on the rest of the membership of the WTO. Of course there are all sorts of ways in which that can be done. So there are many trade laws and we've written papers on how you can square the circle between an RTA and a multilateral system. That can be done. But of course what can be done that easily is managing the tension, the political tension between what will then become a formidable force the United States plus the Quad interestingly, the old Quad which is Canada, Japan and some of the rest of the OECD then sparring really with the rest of the membership of the WTO and that will be done piece by piece, part by part with bilaterally, with different countries. So I think that scenario is one of a great deal of tension in the world trading system. That's what I see happening if the US succeeds in getting the mega regionals off the ground. It isn't the Tokyo round. The Tokyo round there was agreement by these plurilaterals which is basically the OECD countries and then of course the agreements were multilateralized in the Uruguay round and it isn't the Uruguay round. We have a significant number of countries who are key players and actually in the WTO this has been acknowledged. So there is now a group of countries in the WTO at the core of the decision making and that includes not only the EU and the US but also China, India and Brazil, the G5 so at every ministerial meeting since the launch of the Doha round those five countries have been at the core of the decisions even at the last one in Nairobi from what I recall from the discussions I've heard they were the guys who made the decision so Brazil is there, India and China. The rest of course are not always participants Africa group, the LDCs and other developing countries and so that is one concern and where there is a need for quite a lot of pressure on some of the big developing countries to make sure that they don't contribute to the marginalization of the smaller countries. Now on the question that Roger has raised I think I'll follow Rodin's advice maybe we can discuss that but I think the two issues there one is leveling the playing field on the technical issues well we've done that interestingly as from Cancun especially with the creation of the G20 and then of course the other groups but the knowledge and expertise has been shared so Brazil and India we usually are more technically capable but also some smaller countries like Chile or Argentina Uruguay and they all have expertise so this expertise has been shared so we've managed to I think level the playing field on the technical capacity with the United States and Europe on every technical issue we've matched them on the bargaining capacity so the other thing is when the negotiations were taking place we matched them so there was a reasonable degree of let's say negotiating parity when the negotiations were taking place on say modalities on agriculture or NAMA or services that did happen and so as I said there were deals struck and compromises reached but of course you know ultimately the bigger countries are veto and the United States still has you know it's the biggest power in the block and it also has the capacity to build alliances which it has done it can bring the whole of the European Union around and Japan and Canada and it has done so and it has blocked the negotiations from going forward so we don't have an answer to that so I'll try to be very brief so the mega regionals I mean I certainly hope they will fail I'm no fan of them at all and I think if they do fail you know essentially we will just go back to essentially status a sort of status in the WTO and the important thing there is to make sure that the WTO is an institution in a sense it carries on doing as much business as it can quietly through committees perhaps through the dispute settlement process because eventually someone is going to want to talk about something and it will be very useful to have an institution that is there so I think the prospect I don't know I'd hate to give prognosis but I think I agree with Kirsten I think it's pretty unlikely now that we're going to get either TPP and if we don't get TPP and that's what I would guess a comment on just below the bricks and in a sense a reflection on what Faisal just said about negotiations I mean I think the conversation we've had this morning has sort of I know everyone knows this is not true but sometimes it does sound as if we believe there is one group called developing countries and it's really great that the three biggest powers and developing countries are now sitting at the table but don't believe that China or India or even Brazil are going to be more benign than the US and the EU and so for the next tier in a sense that's part of what they've got to start thinking about and you know it would do them well they're not going to be benign either but they have interests and maybe they can organize themselves as it were to get some of those through but don't believe that all is well there are three big developing countries at the table it's actually not like that and then finally and its comment about anti-globalization I mean I think you're exactly right that it is the Brexit the Brexit vote was not pure anti-trade globalization that left behind but I mean this group of pensioners if we look at the geographical spread it's clear that it was among the people that were not internationalized in the areas that were not internationalized and if you mention the pensioners I mean the things that we heard from the pensioners is one concerns about their families sort of things like cost of housing and so on secondly very vehemently migration and thirdly remember that they come from they have at my age it hardly behows me to say this but they have an old world view my father is a great liberal but my father can't quite get it up for migrants he's not offensive or anything like that but he doesn't feel it viscerally this is a group that knows about the war they succeeded he's a great Britain and I think you put a role all of that together it's not at all difficult to understand why nearly two million more people voted for Brexit than voted against it so I don't think that in a sense is a great mystery and given the sort of feelings about migration about the sort of isolation of Great Britain it is basically a sort of opposition to globalization what's the narrative in the next campaign well it is clear that the campaign was grotesquely mishandled in Britain I think that's among many appalling things of that government did but on the other hand we should not accept Michael Gove's statement those of you not from Britain perhaps didn't hear this but Michael Gove a leading advocate of Brexit said oh we've heard too much from experts now that is a catastrophic position and so we have got to be very clear what we know what we don't know what it means for people and Rodin and Faisal have joined me in an enterprise in Britain calling the UK Trade Policy Observatory one of the objectives of which is to try and have a belated conversation in Britain about trade policy what we actually need not with a view particularly to persuading people or shifting information but actually just with a view to explaining to people what's going on and so I do think that we mustn't we mustn't quit on the idea that the world heard from too many economists the economist must just be a little bit more humble and they mustn't be associated with a purely project fear thank you Ellen we have time for three more questions in just ten minutes my apologies to those of you who can't ask the questions Richard I'll invite you first then Barry and then gentlemen over there it's quite a short bunch did you hear that it's a very short yeah no no no my question is really a question I'd like from each of the panelists what would be your one priority for action in this area and by whom I can stop there I'd love to say more thank you Richard wonderfully succinct Barry Gillis please thanks Barry Gillis University of Helsinki the reflections of the panel brought to my mind a comment by the late John Kenneth Galbraith in which he reflected and said that well elites now tend to talk too much about free trade and not enough about social justice and we have to remember that a linear conception of the ever onward progress of free trade is not really the best end in itself or seen as an end in itself so if you think of global crises in the present time today we've still got a situation you might characterize as global overproduction and maldistribution of the product and which involves a worrying level of environmental destruction and degradation and threats to human security and pollution and the climate crisis and so if we go forward into this era those are real crises global crises then in what way do we seek to reform the global trading system that would rectify rationalize resolve some of those problems which I would argue are more fundamental thanks there's a gentleman at the end who has the final question yes a quick one, mine has been partially answered already it's to do with the capacity issue would you see the African countries on the negotiation table also have the capacity if you look at the numbers I think if you look at Britain and other countries would you see they have the capacity and if not then why do we call it a negotiation thank you thank you colleagues we have about eight minutes to wrap our panel up I'm conscious of everyone's food security so Fraser I will ask you to go first then Alan then Kristen to wrap things up please yeah I think I'll answer the last question first I think the short answer is that the African countries generally don't have the technical capacity neither is there participation and negotiating you know ability consistent because Africa is a big continent and actually Africa has many different interests the nature of the you know economies are quite different you have Mauritius and Seychelles and you know small economies planned locked economies large countries big populations like Nigeria Egypt and then relatively more industrialized economies like South Africa are very different economies mostly agricultural based mostly commodity based but some like South Africa has a wider set of interests so not so easy to put them all together but having said all of that I think they have played a great role you know since Cancun but a lot needs to be done and one of the amazing things and fascinating things that I'm personally very excited about is the work that's going on in Africa now to integrate the continent there's a huge amount of learning because everyone's working hard to negotiate and to build regional integration so you know I think from that experience African countries will understand much better what their own interests are from that experience and we will be able to negotiate with third countries around the world including the United States, China and everyone else the other question was about what Richard Jolly you know I tell you what the gap is that I see in all of this I don't know what we can do there's no point saying the United States should do this and that or Europe or China or India because actually what is that going to do normally when there's a crisis there's an impasse in a negotiation you need someone to mediate you know someone to start talking to get the process going to facilitate you know we don't have many people like that in fact the normal suspects don't exist before it used to be the Swiss or the Norwegians or the Swedes or somebody but actually they are all they've taken sides so I think what we need when this global value change thing started interesting I need to write a paper on it one day with Rod and self which is about how an epistemic community evolved around this new narrative but why don't we create our own epistemic community starting here you know in this room with the United Nations since we are in this building and create a group of people around the world north and south with the same set of values people want to rebuild the multilateral system which is broken or let's say you know revitalize it given the new realities of the world and I think the multilateral trading system is very important what we have in the WTO is a good basic framework it needs a lot of reform and you know we need a better analysis of the global economy we need a better analysis of what the key challenges are in the world today and what would be you know a better response to the ones that are being put forward so that's what I would suggest epistemic community let's start here primary problem is this issue of inequality and the primary action needed is redistributive policies and mechanisms to try to lower inequality and I think the problem is that the global trading system isn't necessarily the right institution or sort of actors to try to address this problem and the issue is for the past 30 plus years in the sphere of sort of the neoliberal Washington consensus trade has been sold as this panacea is a miracle solution to all economic and social ills that it's magically going to generate growth and prosperity and you know goodness for all and that just doesn't hold up and I think that's part of the reason why people don't trust the experts because this is what the experts have been shilling for 30 years and it hasn't panned out so I think I'd say yeah we need much more nuanced and respectful analysis and rhetoric to match and I think also the other problem the trading system it's an adversarial system you know set up around negotiations among self-interested states and that's not necessarily the best form to try to address these large scale issues of inequality and distribution thank you I can be very brief because I agree with both the previous answers I think you know the priority for action I wish I had something really concrete and plausible but like Faisal I think we've come to a period where we shouldn't be having too high an expectation of our political masters and what they will achieve when they get together in international institutions but that doesn't mean to say that some of the basic principles of multilateralism have disappeared and therefore it does seem to me I don't know whether a group constructing a group that all had the same view in a sense is feasible or actually solves the problem of getting everybody in my own instinct is much more that we need to have a pretty vigorous and debate in which there will be quite a lot of disagreement but in which I hope you know as it were people rather than adversarial and wanting to win that particular point at any cost will actually be moderately open minded and recognised as some of us have done for a long time that there are things that are good but are not universally good for everybody and that takes me back to Barry's point I mean it's certainly true that there was a period in the late 90s really where we had immense hubris the the iron curtain had come down it's created the world trade organisation I mean it was frankly mindless it started getting unpicked around 1997 or so and there is a sense in which a lot of the combatants should we say in that debate didn't really manage to get off their hobby horses and their high ground for a decade but there was actually quite a lot of debate if you look I spent some time actually going back over Oxfam's writings and Oxfam changes view quite a lot from 1995 onwards if you look at the writings of academic economists on international trade indeed there has always been a recognition that we go back to the famous Stolper Samuelson theorem of 1942 or something it was very clear that we would never lose it it's not something that is new to academic economists what's in a sense has happened is they've fed a line which some people then have blown into proportion and therefore it does seem to me that we need to have some more I don't think it's humility I guess serious recognition of what our science and our study tells us that indeed trade is pretty difficult to handle it has distributional consequences that you just cannot avoid and recognize therefore that if you have a democratic society if you feel a responsibility for the vast majority of people in the community you do have to couple trade with other things in order to get the benefits of trade which are massive I mean you know you had an orange for breakfast this morning I mean you had an orange for breakfast this morning a finish off orange of course it wasn't a finish orange trade brings wonderful wonderful things the issue is what you do about the sort of gritty rough edges that you've got around I agree entirely with Kirsten look I mean there comes a point where maybe environmental policy robs up against trade and indeed trade is the most constraining trade is the most efficient way of solving the environmental problem but almost always that is not the case almost always you need to tackle environmental problems with environmental agreements as we are doing and so on for your anti-microbials with anti-microbial problems and so on well trade looks like a handle and people want to co-opt the trade dispute settlement mechanism which is almost unique in world institutions for whatever they're aiming at and so I do think that part of the rhetoric has to be to say no no there are specific problems we can tackle them in ways that you know they don't overlap except on the very margins one of those circumstances trade does not dominate it's exactly right there are things there are occasions when we should be able to say all our theory suggests that liberalising trade will increase aggregate output but actually it's not worth it I oppose TPP that is exactly the reason I think everything that comes with TPP is just not worth a quarter of percent of US GDP thank you Alan thank you panellists for a very fruitful discussion thank you all for contributing to that