Global Trade Wake Up Call

World Trade Organization’s director-general Pascal Lamy, says our current financial crisis is a “wake-up call” indicating that the global economy cannot grow above the limits of its real production, and that feeding it by debt and liquidity may only provoke severe corrections.He reminds us , however, that this is not the first shock witnessed by the multilateral trading system. Despite its young age, the WTO has already faced previous episodes of financial crises, and has shown resilience.“By keeping markets open during periods of financial and external payments crisis, the multilateral trading system has shown that it can give a chance to crisis-stricken countries to recover through trade,” he declares.But are our law makers listening? Lamy fears they may be turning once again toward protectionist policies. He argues that international financial institutions and the export credit agencies have the possibility to expand their contributions to cover risk and provide additional liquidity under existing instruments. But this will not happen without public authorities stepping in to provide them with more support.