Former USMCA Negotiator Argues for His WTO Director-General Candidacy

Seade is one of eight nominees for WTO director-general. He spoke from Hong Kong to the Washington International Trade Association. Seade, who is undersecretary for trade in Mexico, lived in Hong Kong for nine years and in China for a year before returning to Mexican government service.

Previously, Seade worked in Geneva as Mexico's ambassador to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, was Mexico's chief negotiator as the GATT transformed into the WTO, and was the WTO's first deputy director-general.

“Having been a co-creator of this thing, I really feel bad about how it's going,” he said July 7. He said the WTO needs a director-general who is conversant with its history, because that's important to understand the roots of its current conflicts, and, he believes, it shows some ways the WTO and GATT managed to get out of previous morasses.

“I believe we are now getting too close for comfort of … the real demise of the system,” he said.

So the WTO needs someone who won't just be an administrator or dialogue facilitator, he said -- and that's not what he's interested in doing. “I would see myself as being a respectful, tactful, politically careful but assertive leader,” he said.

Seade said people think the thorniest problems in the last successful round of WTO negotiations -- the Uruguay Round, more than 25 years ago -- were agriculture or intellectual property.

But he said the “worst challenge” was writing the rules for antidumping, which the United States and Europe were using against South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

The economic threat posed to European and U.S. industries by China's government-directed industrialization is much larger, and is at the heart of the U.S.-China trade war.

“The challenge was created by God almighty for us to address it, and to solve it,” he said of countries' frustration with the WTO's inability to discipline China, which they see as not operating a free market economy. “The alternative is worse.”

He said that the dispute settlement system has been effective in dealing with complaints on China, but there is room to do more through negotiations at the WTO. He noted the work underway with the U.S., European Union and Japan on industrial subsidies “that is very interesting work.”

“I do believe China will be a tough negotiator, they will not be a pushover ever, but at the same time they will not risk bringing down the WTO,” he said. When he lived in China, he said, he saw that the Chinese view their membership in the WTO as the second-most important development in the country's modern economic advances.

In response to a question from Asia Society Policy Institute Vice President Wendy Cutler, Seade said that trying to change the self-declaration of developing countries -- who are eligible for “special and differential treatment” -- is a lost cause.

“It's an impossible issue, it’s like discussing theology,” he said. “You’re going to convince me of your religion and I have another.” But Seade said it's not right that Brazil or Mexico be treated the same way as Angola, so whatever differential treatment is offered should be done on a case-by-case basis, related to the competitiveness of an individual sector.

Cutler said she admires his pragmatism, as a former trade negotiator herself, but added, “I do think it is a serious problem -- it kind of undermines the credibility of the WTO.”

Seade said plurilateral negotiations at the WTO are a building block for more comprehensive negotiations in the future, and pointed to the Tokyo Round paving the way for the Uruguay Round years later. He did acknowledge that the Uruguay Round, which was transformative by bringing agriculture within the rules, bringing developing countries inside the rules, was possible “precisely because there were huge enticements,” such as opening up agriculture and liberalizing textile trade.