With input from NGOs, the CTE has defined key environmental disputes more clearly and generated promising reform proposals. The CTE experience suggests that high-level multilateral discussion can concentrate intellectual and diplomatic resources on the development and pursuit of a coherent trade policy agenda. The key stakeholders will each need to defend core claims and proposals in a trade and labor dialogue. Some developing country governments appear to believe that improved worker protections will undermine labor-cost advantages. Free-traders must confront growing evidence that trade liberalization does not always produce growth in developing countries, and that growth does not always raise living standards for working people.
Sanctions are a notoriously blunt policy instrument.
Their targets often can insulate themselves from their impact, and their chief victims often are the very people they were designed to help. Proposals to enforce labor standards with trade measures raise other difficult questions. Another important role for a multilateral trade and labor dialogue would be to commission and direct research to fill critical knowledge gaps. We need stronger and more detailed data on the impact of differences in labor standards on the composition and direction of trade. That, in turn, will require a better methodology for the cross-national evaluation of labor conditions.