[UNCTAD] Trade Protectionism - Is it Necessary?

Written by Global Times

UNCTAD’s ongoing discussion on plausible solutions.

Diving into the second day of conference, the UNCTAD has not seemed to have made much progress, and has been stuck on the ideology of diversifying trade. The bulk of the debate so far has been led mainly by the delegate of Thailand, who continued to emphasise the need to help undeveloped countries. UNCTAD has scrapped the idea of providing monetary aid and has focused on providing more trade opportunities for the underdeveloped countries. Their reasoning? Monetary aid will not be able to help these countries gain back the losses from the by-product of the US-China trade war. 

Though it was made clear that the main focus of the UNCTAD was to help underdeveloped countries, the delegates have been going around in circles over their solutions. As they continue on, they have not made much progress, calling for multiple unmoderated caucuses only to be stuck debating about the same solution, but not refining it. 

After coming back from the break, the UNCTAD has picked up speed and their focus has now shifted to trade protectionism. Trade protectionism is known to place limits or promote trade for certain countries. In this case, the council is looking at promoting trade of underdeveloped countries. The delegates of both Malaysia and Japan have both expressed their utmost support for trade protectionism. However, not all delegates agree. Delegates such as India and Thailand have expressed their concerns, explaining that trade protectionist policies may end up harming their economies instead of helping it. This is true to some extent as implementing trade protectionist policies will cause negative impacts such as causing the prices of items to fall, which in turn will harm the country’s economy.

The many delegates have seemed to stray away from US and China, concerning themselves more with both their own and other countries, hinting towards reducing reliance on US and China economically. It should be noted that by implying that other countries should reduce their reliance on the US and China, this may in turn end up hurting both their economies too. Furthermore, China and US delegates seemed to be unincluded much in the conversation. This hints at the ineffectiveness of the other delegates, knowing that the US and China both play a very important role in affecting the outcome of the entire topic.

While it is important that third parties are severely affected by the ripple effects of the trade war, there should also be some focus as to how to ease the impact of the trade war. Although the UNCTAD does not have the ability to stop the US-China trade war, they should still put in the effort and take the opportunity to try and ease tensions between US and China’s economic relations. The USA delegate has chosen to remain silent on this matter when asked a question regarding whether the US has any interest in working on her relationship with China. This serves to be a big issue as long as the US-China trade war continues to persist, so will the impacts from it. 

Though there is not much time left, delegates should try to find ways to strengthen their current solution, and plan for it to be able to last till the end of the US-China trade war as there is no end of it in sight . 


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