Trade Policy Roundtable

Investment and Competition Rules after Canc�n: Post-Cancun Review (October 17, 2003)

Meeting at 10.30 a.m. on Friday, October 17, 2003, at Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, 2445 M Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037

TO stay effective the multilateral trading system needs to keep abreast of the integration of the world economy. Accordingly, the next phase in its development, after it was pulled back from the brink in the early 1980s, was � among other things � to extend its rules to investment regulations and domestic competition laws.  Earlier, in the Tokyo Round negotiations, governments tried to make effective the GATT�s rules on non-tariff measures, which prohibit them from being used to discriminate against foreign suppliers in favor of domestic ones, thus distorting international competition.  In the Uruguay Round negotiations the Tokyo Round codes of conduct on non-tariff measures, which ended up being voluntary and plurilateral, were turned into contractual and multilateral agreements.  More was needed.  GATT rules are about security of access to markets, but security for trade-related foreign investment in markets is also important; and, moreover, access to markets is of little avail if it can be frustrated by anti-competitive practices, such as domestic cartels. So the first WTO Ministerial Conference, held in Singapore in December 1996, authorized working groups to consider extending WTO rules to investment and competition � as well as government procurement and trade facilitation.  In Canc�n, at the fifth WTO Ministerial Conference, the developing countries spurned negotiations on the Singapore issues.  So what are the options now for international rules on investment and on competition? 

EDWARD M. GRAHAM, a Senior Fellow at the Institute for International Economics, and SCOTT MILLER, Director of National Government Relations at Procter & Gamble, will discuss international investment rules.  DIANE P. WOOD, a Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals (7th Circuit), WILLIAM KOLASKY, a Partner at Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, attorneys-a-law, and JEAN-FRAN�OIS BOITTIN, Minister-Counselor at the Embassy of France, will discuss international competition rules.

About the Speakers and Discussants

Edward M. Graham

MONTY GRAHAM, a Senior Fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC, is co-author with Paul Krugman of Foreign Direct Investment in the United States (third edition, 1995) and author of Global Corporations and National Governments (1996) and Fighting the Wrong Enemy: Antiglobalist Activists and Multinational Enterprises (2001).  In the late 1980s, Dr Graham was an economist at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he was seconded to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development for two years.  He has taught in business schools at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Duke University and held visiting positions at several institutions, including Harvard (where he obtained his PhD), Stanford, the University of Virginia, INSEAD and the University of Paris I.

Diane P. Wood

DIANE WOOD was Professor of Law at the University of Chicago in 1988-95, having taught there since 1981, and Deputy Assistant Attorney-General in the U.S. Justice Department�s Antitrust Division in 1993-95 before being appointed a circuit judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals (7th Circuit).  After graduating from the University of Texas in 1971, and obtaining her JD degree there in 1975, she was a law clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals (5th Circuit) and the U.S. Supreme Court, then an attorney advisor at the U.S. Department of State (1977-78), an associate at Covington & Burling in Washington, DC (1978-80) and Assistant Professor of Law at Georgetown University in 1980-81.  In 1993-95, Judge Wood was also H.J. and M.F. Green Professor of International Legal Studies at the University of Chicago, where she is still a senior lecturer in law.

Jean-Fran�ois Boittin

JEAN-FRAN�OIS BOITTIN has been, as Minister-Counselor for Economic and Commercial Affairs at the Embassy in Washington, DC, the head of the French Economic Mission to the United States since 1999.  He was previously France�s Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organization in Geneva, having held various trade-policy positions in DREE, the Department of External Economic Relations, in Paris.  Mr Boittin had an earlier sojourn at the Embassy of France in Washington in the 1980s.

William J. Kolasky

WILLIAM KOLASKY joined Wilmer Cutler & Pickering, attorneys-at-law, in 1975 and became a partner in 1979.  He is co-chairman of the firm�s anti-trust and competition practice.  In 2001-2003, he was Deputy Assistant Attorney-General in the U.S. Justice Department�s Antitrust Division, where he led the effort to encourage greater convergence among competition authorities worldwide and to promote the application of sound economic principles to merger reviews and helped to form the International Competition Network.

Scott Miller

SCOTT MILLER joined the Procter & Gamble Company in 1979 and served in a range of manufacturing and marketing positions before becoming, in 1995, the Director of National Government Relations.  Mr Miller is co-chairman of USTrade, an alliance of over 500 companies and associations that worked to secure passage in 2001 of trade-promotion authority, and chairs the investment committee of the U.S. Council for International Business and the WTO working group at the National Foreign Trade Council.

The Cordell Hull Institute�s Trade Policy Roundtable is sponsored by Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Arnold & Porter, Hogan & Hartson, O�Melveny & Myers, Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, Steptoe & Johnson and Wilmer Cutler & Pickering