By all accounts (well, at least those conveyed to me), this week’s TTIP conference at the Cato Institute was a resounding success. It featured a diversity of excellent speakers from across the political, ideological, geographic, and professional spectra, and it covered a broad swath of economic, political, geopolitical, and technical issues. Though opinions varied over the numerous substantive issues discussed by the conferees, there was fairly strong agreement that TTIP (at least the TTIP envisioned at the outset of the negotiations) will require an enormous amount of effort, political will, and flexibility to deviate from script to have any chance of coming to fruition.

As if the road to success weren’t daunting enough, many observers worry that success, if not too elusive, might be too costly. That is, as a large exclusive club, TTIP would hasten the demise of the World Trade Organization and the multilateral trading rules under its auspices, and that it would put third countries–especially developing ones–at disadvantages that reduce their economic prospects.

One of the panel discussions was devoted to consideration of the impact of TTIP on the multilateral trading system, including the impact on developing countries. Two of the speakers in that session were former WTO heavyweights: Joakim Reiter (former Swedish Ambassador to the WTO) and Harsha Singh (former Deputy Director General of the WTO), who are now, respectively, Deputy Secretary‐​General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and Senior Associate at the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development. In their conference essays, each explains how a successful TTIP can be formulated to ensure that it doesn’t subvert the WTO or hurt developing countries.

Harsha’s essay is TTIP: A Bridge or Gulf for Multilateralizing Plurilaterals.

Joakim’s essay is The Effects of TTIP on Developing Countries.

All of the essays published in conjunction with the conference can be found here.