Argentina hopes China will help improve WTO

Argentina will host the Eleventh World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in Buenos Aires from Dec 10 to 13. The WTO's main decisions are made at this meeting, which takes place every two years. As the host, it is both a great honor and challenge for Argentina to preside over a conference whose rule-based systems stem not from confrontation or wielding of power, but are the fruits of careful consensus building.

We frequently hear - in an underlying, critical tone - that ensuring and defending free trade is the duty of the WTO. However, it is clearly written in the Marrakesh Agreement, WTO's founding document, that the organization's purpose is to facilitate the entry "into reciprocal and mutually advantageous arrangements directed to the substantial reduction of tariffs and other barriers to trade, and to the elimination of discriminatory treatment in international trade relations".

This purpose is to be achieved by "raising standards of living, ensuring full employment" and "in accordance with the objective of sustainable development, seeking both to protect and preserve the environment, and to enhance the means for doing so in a manner consistent with their respective needs and concerns at different levels of economic development".