While export restrictions are not allowed, production is not actually addressed. As such, members find themselves with no pressure to extract and produce energy resources.
This is the source of the difficulties as some members are trying to make sure that they have access to supplies of petroleum, natural gas, coal, and uranium in foreign countries. In other words, members are trying to secure the right to purchase in particular from other members. As such, further thinking is required to optimize the exploitation or sharing of natural resources.
Some schools of thought even argue that such resources should be declared world common resources. As a matter of fact, many exporters are already improving their domestic efficiency by using loopholes such as the issue of export taxes, which is not actually catered for in GATT Article XI. Nevertheless, economists still argue that export limitations are harmful to both importing and exporting countries. The Service Transportation IssueThis issue is concerned with who will provide the pipeline transportation services, and how.
For instance, what national consumers of pipeline service transportation can or cannot do. Just like transportation in the goods sector, the service sector has also known some further developments. As such, it is now more concerned with the conditions of passage than with conditions of access for individual or commercial consumers of pipeline services. Nevertheless, these 2 things are linked to a large extent. In other words, there is the presence of a proper nondiscriminatory access to a pipeline. As such, further research and thinking is required on this issue to be able to clarify what is covered by transit, to optimize the right of passage, apply national treatment, process papers and formalities, and tackle the bilateral and RTA transit agreements..
Issues in energy sectorQuestions are being raised as to whether a new international governance structure for energy will have to take place in the WTO. As a matter of fact, there are existing WTO rules that are applicable to trade in energy today. Also, aspects of trade in energy are already being discussed in the transit, export taxes, and energy-related services. Furthermore, several basic WTO provisions already cater for transit, state trading, subsidies, regulatory controls, and a wide range of energy related services. As such, even if a separate international entity comes up with a deal on energy issues, WTO members would still need to create rules on the relationship between relevant WTO rules and non-WTO rules affecting trade in energy.
To conclude on this issue, another weakness of the WTO is the absence of a comprehensive system of rules on investment or competition, and it is impossible to properly and completely address energy issues without taking into account the ever-present dimensions of energy in international relations of today.WTO v/s BlocsThe aim of WTO being to liberalise trade and a more open World is the right way to proceed. Nevertheless, this has been somewhat teased by the presence and creation of trade blocs, customs unions, and the other types of integrations. As a matter of fact, those institutions all want trade to be less costly. Nevertheless, contrary to the WTO, these blocs only facilitate exchange and further aspects for member countries only. Furthermore, custom unions impose the same amount of tariffs on non-members. As such, looking at the bigger picture, those bloc come in the way of the WTO in promoting free trade by discriminating against non- members, hence giving birth to trade diversion and rising inefficiencies and inequalities on several occasions.Lack of flexibilityWTO has often been found guilty of lack of flexibility.
As an illustration, the United States tried to ban shrimp caught using harmful apparatus to endangered sea turtles, and they were consequently forced to reverse their decision as it was labeled WTO-illegal. In a normal operating World, a move to help protect the nature, including endangered species should have been saluted and welcomed. Nevertheless, this was not the case. Another illustration comes from the effort of Guatemala to help decrease the count of infant mortality. They attempted this by tackling aggressive marketing by baby companies aimed to make mothers believe that their products are better for their babies than breast milk.
Again, this move should have been encouraged. However, affected corporations managed to take the issue to GATT (the predecessor of WTO) and won their appeal, hence getting the law reversed. Further illustrations of WTO’s lack of flexibility are that countries cannot say no to genetically engineered food. As such, milk containing genetically engineered growth hormones, known for causing health problems, cannot be avoided.The WTO has agreed to find a cure to the problem of public stockholding programmes for food security purposes. The latters are used by some head of states to buy, stockpile, and distribute food to people in need.As a matter of fact, the WTO is working with several other international entities on an Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS).
The latter is used to spot abnormal market conditions that would affect food security, and deal with those. Actually, the contribution of WTO is by sharing trade policy information that members have sent to the WTO. The main issue in particular is the fact that some countries need more food from this programme for inhabitants to be food secure.
Nevertheless, the large number of food made available will cause an economic distortion which might be in terms of prices, and might lead to food producers being unwilling to invest in the concerned countries.Following the 2013 Bali Ministerial Conference, the 2015 Nairobi Ministerial Conference also ruled on public stockholding programmes. They agreed that the programme would not be challenged legally in developing countries, even if a country’s agreed limits for trade-distorting domestic support were breached.
