“Failure to advance the Trade Facilitation Agreement today would be a blow to the multilateral trading system.
“In the short term, we hope that the more than 150 members of the WTO who were committed to this outcome will seek to engineer a solution that permits this important agreement to move forward.
“More broadly, today’s developments suggest that there is little hope for truly global trade talks to take place. Businesses are multilateralists at heart, but they’re also pragmatic and will look to talks among smaller groups to achieve what now appears to be impossible among the entire membership of the World Trade Organization.
“The vast majority of countries who understand the importance of modernizing trade rules and keeping their promises need to pick up the pieces and figure out how to move forward in ways that avoid letting one country hold up shared progress.”
About the NFTC
NFTC is Celebrating our New Century in 2014! Details at www.nftc.org – The National Foreign Trade Council (www.nftc.org) is a leading business organization advocating an open, rules-based global trading system. Founded in 1914 by a broad-based group of American companies, the NFTC now serves hundreds of member companies through its offices in Washington and New York.Follow us on:
