[GA - PASSED] Repeal: "On Multilateral Trade Talks"

---

General Assembly Resolution #221 “On Multilateral Trade Talks” (Category: Free Trade; Strength: Mild) shall be struck out and rendered null and void.

Noting that Article 1 of GA#221 requires that the World Assembly organise "multilateral trade negotiations... with the mandate of reducing protectionist measures between all member nations" on a decadal basis, and that its Article 3 tasks members with deploying "at least one qualified delegate to these negotiations,"

Concluding that GA#221 not only fails to require members to actually subscribe to free trade agreements, but in fact allows member state delegates to its negotiations to attempt to reach such agreements about exceedingly minor categories of goods and services with other delegates, so long as they meet Article 4's requirement that they "make a good faith effort... to come to mutually beneficial agreements which are in the best interests of all national populations involved" in doing so,

Firmly refusing to applaud GA#221's goal of "reducing protectionist measures between [member]s," given that GA#26 "World Assembly Economic Union" - the third article of which had similar provisions to that of GA#221 - was repealed by GA#45 exactly because of the damage that the WA-sanctioned reduction of such measures can cause to the economies of the least developed members, and

Believing that individual members are more than capable of negotiating their own free trade agreements - comprehensive or otherwise - without having to be babysat by the WA in the process...

The General Assembly hereby repeals GA#221 "On Multilateral Trade Talks."

Click to expand...

Note: Only votes from TNP WA nations and NPA personnel will be counted. If you do not meet these requirements, please add (non-WA) or something of that effect to your vote.

---

Voting Instructions:

• Vote For if you want the Delegate to vote For the resolution.
• Vote Against if you want the Delegate to vote Against the resolution.
• Vote Abstain if you want the Delegate to abstain from voting on this resolution.
• Vote Present if you are personally abstaining from this vote.

Detailed opinions with your vote are appreciated and encouraged!

---

[TR][TD] For [/TD][TD]Against[/TD][TD] Abstain [/TD][TD] Present [/TD][/TR][TR][TD]1[/TD][TD]8[/TD][TD]2[/TD][TD]1[/TD][/TR]

IFV

Overview

This proposal seeks to repeal GA #221 due to onerous bureaucratic regulations, the possibility of bad-faith negotiations between actors seeking a trade deal, and that a decadal negotiation requirement is simply nonsensical. Further, the author of this repeal notes that the resolution’s goal of reducing protectionist measures between member states is actively harmful to least developed states.

Recommendation

The real-life economic literature blasts any evidence for the point that protectionist measures do anything other than to create nascent industries (such as with high textile tariffs in the US in the 1820s-1860s) while doing little to support them (beyond keeping prices of foreign goods higher than domestic wares) and as such, it is impossible for us to support something which vehemently protects trade protection. While the author’s argument that actively encouraged free trade measures may hurt some less developed member state economies, the preponderance of evidence of what happens when states impose financial barriers to trade (such as with the disastrous impacts of the Corn Laws on rural peasantry in Scotland and Ireland, the effects of the Hawley-Smoot Tariff in exacerbating the economic decline which led to the Great Depression, and more) make it clear that harming efforts to promote free trade, at least in real life, harm nations in the medium-to-long term. In terms of this resolution though, we remain thoroughly unconvinced that arguments over minutiæ, however pedantic, are not in the interests of ensuring effective negotiations between member states. Further, we resent the remark, given the passage of GA#531, that this sort of area is not either exclusively in the remit of, or at least not substantively in need of regulation by, the World Assembly.

For the above reasons, the Ministry of World Assembly Affairs recommends a vote Against the General Assembly Resolution at vote, “Repeal: ‘On Multilateral Trade Talks’”.

Author - happy to answer your questions about this (and to see actually new people manning the MoWAA vote thread deck ).

Against

This proposal has achieved the necessary approvals to enter the formal queue. Barring it being marked illegal or it being withdrawn before then, this will proceed to a vote at Major Update on Monday, August 2.

For (non-WA). There is no real reason to have international legislation on negotiating trades.

Present.

For

Against

Against

A Big against

Abstain

Against

Against.