PLENARY: Priorities for the WTO in an evolving global trade and investment architecture

The global trade and investment architecture (GTIA) plays a critical role in shaping how international production, distribution, and consumption patterns are organised and structured. The E15Initiative is engaging experts and other high-level actors in conversations about the challenges facing the GTIA and opportunities to strengthen its inclusion and legitimacy. In this plenary session, speakers focused on the greatest gaps or weaknesses in the architecture that are affecting its ability to respond to a growing list of economic, social, and environmental challenges and new dynamics in trade and investment landscape. Speakers also discussed what changes or improvements to the architecture are needed over the short- or medium-term, with an emphasis on priority actions for the WTO, and which would yield the greatest benefits from a sustainable development viewpoint.

Building on ICTSD’s twenty-year history of encouraging innovative thinking on trade and sustainable development issues at WTO Ministerial Conferences, 2015’s Trade and Development Symposium (TDS) acted as a crucial platform for intellectual enquiry and dialogue on the future of the multilateral trading system. The E15Initiative stream at the Trade and Development Symposium focused on dialogue around the key deliverables the Initiative’s world class experts released in January 2016 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Discussions provided an exclusive preview of the policy options that have been developed over four years by some of the world’s most pre-eminent trade policy experts.