Beijing must ‘walk the talk’ on trade: former WTO chief

BEIJING, Dec 2, (AFP): Beijing’s pledges to pursue trade liberalisation in the face of a potentially more protectionist US under Donald Trump meant it was time for China to “walk the talk” on the issue, former WTO director-general Pascal Lamy said Friday.

Lamy, also a former EU commissioner who negotiated China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation, said that despite a rise in anti-globalisation rhetoric, he expected the EU and China to remain key players in keeping international trade open.

But, speaking in the Chinese capital, he added: “China has had a lot of talk of trade-opening and globalisation, and not much walk.

“It is time for China to walk the talk,” he told a conference at Renmin University’s Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies.

US President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to ditch the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) once taking office, and analysts say the move could give Beijing an opportunity to forge ahead with its own trade deals and fill a vacuum left by any American withdrawal.

“Whether trade-opening is done multilaterally, bilaterally, regionally, eastwest, north-south, that doesn’t matter,” said Lamy. What matters, he said, was that “obstacles to trade are reduced. You go the best option you have”.

A US withdrawal from the TPP would have limited impact on world trade, he insisted.