多边贸易体制制度设计与改革前景

Multilateral Trading System:Institutional Architecture and the Prospect of Reform

特朗普上台以后,美国政府多次声称要退出世界贸易组织,恶意阻止多边争端解决机制中的上诉机构大法官的正常遴选进程,致使该委员会的运行陷入瘫痪。美国还要挟世界贸易组织的改革议程,给多边贸易体制的前景蒙上浓重的阴影。在此背景下,主要国家改革世界贸易组织和多边贸易体制的方案纷纷出台。然而无论采用哪一种方案,世界贸易组织和多边贸易体制仍然不能推动多哈回合谈判或者建立新的多边贸易规则,更无法推动发展中成员的贸易自由化。究其原因,是这些方案都没有触及一个基本问题:世界贸易组织和多边贸易体制能够推动世界贸易自由化的极限何在、何处是其制度的能力边界。作者从国际经济制度设计及其背后的理论逻辑角度分析了多边贸易体制的优势、局限及其面临的挑战,并对其前景和可能的改革思路等进行了讨论,主要得出两点结论:第一,作为一种国际经济制度安排,多边贸易体制推动了发达国家之间的贸易自由化,并促进了从第二次世界大战结束到20世纪70年代初的世界贸易快速发展,同时也为80年代以来的区域以及全球生产网络的发展打下基础。第二,超越多边贸易体制的制度边界,试图推进发展中国家和地区的高水平贸易自由化将是非常困难的。

Since Trump came to power,the U.S.government has repeatedly declared that it would withdraw from the WTO,and maliciously prevented the normal selection process of the judges of the appeal board in the multilateral dispute settlement body,thus successfully paralyzing the operation of the committee.In this context,the major countries' proposals to reform the WTO and the multilateral trade system have been introduced one after another.However,no matter which proposal is adopted,the WTO and multilateral trade system still cannot promote the Doha Round negotiations,or establish new multilateral trade rules,let alone promote the trade liberalization of developing members.The reason is that these proposals have not touched on such basic questions,that is,what the limit of WTO and multilateral trade system in promoting world trade liberalization is,and what the capacity boundary of their systems is.From the perspective of the design of the international economic system and the theoretical logic behind it,the author analyzes the advantages and limitations of the multilateral trading system as well as the challenges it faces,and discusses its prospects and possible reform ideas.The key conclusions are as follows:1)As an international economic institutional arrangement,the multilateral trade system has promoted the trade liberalization among developed countries,and thus promoted the rapid development of world trade from the end of World War II to the early 1970s,and laid the foundation for the development of regional and global production networks in and after the 1980s.2)It is difficult to transcend the institutional boundaries of the multilateral trading system and try to promote high-level trade liberalization in developing countries.