Terence O’brien.
THE failure of Tim Groser’s bid for leadership of the World Trade Organisation is a disappointment for him and for New Zealand.
His competence and energy in trade policy are undeniable.
But it was an uphill contest for two reasons. First, because another New Zealander, Mike Moore, occupied the WTO top slot from 1999 to 2002; and, more importantly, because governments in the major transition economies – the so-called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) plus others – have signalled they anticipate a greater leadership role inside the three key international economic institutions – the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the WTO. Recent toplevel personnel changes witnessed energetic French efforts to ensure the replacement of their lecherous countryman Dominique StraussKahn as IMF chief with Christine Lagarde. Equally the United States had robustly and efficiently inserted its man – the Korean American Jim Yong Kim – to lead the World Bank. These appointments prolong a nearly 70-year monopoly on leadership in those two institutions by Atlantic powers. In the circumstances it was unlikely the Atlantic could pull off a trifecta with the WTO.
In the event no Atlantic aspirant appeared on the contenders’ list in a selection process notably more transparent than that for the IMF or the bank.
Given New Zealand’s total absence of any hard power, a rules-based international system remains a vital national interest.
It is crucial therefore for us that the BRICS and other emergent economies agree to play a full part in sustaining a liberal trading system from which they themselves have so conspicuously benefited. BRICS commitment to sustaining a liberal global system requires, however, they be extended greater influence in the management and agenda-setting of global institutions. This requires, in its turn, that major Western economies allow space for this equivalent opportunity by relinquishing past closely guarded monopolies. It is in New Zealand’s interests that this transformation occurs and in this sense the Groser WTO candidature was perhaps counter-intuitive.
But the prospects for real change are hardly reassuring. Twenty-three years ago when the Cold War ended amid American