Been There, Not [Quite] [Yet] Done That: Lessons and Challenges in Services Trade

Abstract

This paper takes stock of two decades of trade and investment rule making in services, offering insights on the progress accomplished to date and political economy perspectives on a select number of unmet challenges. The paper focuses particular attention on the nature and exigencies of opening services markets; on the tensions between generic (i.e. horizontal) and sector-specific (i.e. vertical) approaches to rule-design and market opening; on the reasons for heightened regulatory precaution in services agreements; on the likely liberalizing attributes of an operational emergency safeguard mechanism for services; on the policy- and rule-making lessons to draw from preferential approaches to services trade and investment and the scope for migrating best regional practices to Geneva; on the difficulty of fitting temporary labour mobility in a multilateral trade policy setting and the systemic implications of not doing so; on the consequences of shifting gears from bilateral to collective requests and offers on market opening; as well as on the elements of a development-friendly aid for trade response in services.

Keywords: World Trade Organization, General Agreement on Trade in Services, trade in services, preferential trade agreements, domestic regulation, emergency safeguard measures, movement of service providers.

JEL Classification: F13, F15, F22