Membership in the WTO is now considered a requirement for any market economy. In 2011,the WTO was set to expand to 155 member nations with the planned accession of Vanuatu and Samoa, While international trade, particularly in tourism and coconut derivatives, is vital to the economies of these two countries, their prospective membership in the WTO is not attracting much international attention compared to the next country in the line for membership-Russia.
Russia ,the 11th largest economy in the world with 2011 GDP approaching $1.5 trillion, is the most important country in the world that had not yet joined the WTO by 2011.After 17 years of negotiation, Russia’s membership is being viewed as likely in the near future. Russia has essentially agreed to consolidate the tariff cuts it has agreed to in multiple bilateral negotiations with some 50 nations and to harmonize its laws related related to market access with WTO requirements.
Russian accession had been subject to a member of obstacles with WTO member including the European Union, the United States, and Georgia among others. In 2010,Russia and the EU reached agreements that set the terms for resolving key issues including pricing policies for lumber exports, railway fees, and aircraft flyover rights in Siberia. With the United States, several theory issues remained. These included U.S. concerns over humans right and Russia ‘s commitment to the rule of law ,as well as trade issues such as investment restrictions, intellectual property rights protection and food safety standards. Russia expects the U.S. Congress to revoke the Jackson-Vanik amendment, which imposed tariff and trade penalties on Russia in 1975 to penalize the country for its restrictive emigration policies, long since removed.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to Russian accession is its neighbor country Georgia. Since the two nations fought a war in 2008, Russian troops still occupy the Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Russia imposes its own customs administration in these areas. Since any one WTO member state can veto a new membership, Georgia is in a position of power. This situation shows that there are always unintended consequences to war. Want to be the loser. This point toward multila negotiations on a broad scale, where concessions can be traded off among countries, and which make it possible for all participants to emerge and declare and declare themselves as winners. The difficulty lies to the bargaining table. One area that would benefit greatly from multilateral negotiations is the regulation of e-commerce and the Internet as described in The International Marketplace 2.4(for more on e-commerce see Chapter 9)
Policymakers must be willing to trade off short-term achievement for long-term goal. All too often, measures that would be beneficial in the long term are