G20 Leaders’ Summit

Session 1 “One Earth”

Thank you Chair, excellencies

My message today is simple:

We cannot deliver a sustainable planet without global trade.

Consider Morocco’s Noor Solar Power Complex – among the world’s largest. It uses solar panels from China, transformers from Japan, cables from Australia and Singapore, and energy storage technologies developed in Spain and Sweden. Morocco’s goal isn’t just to supply its domestic market, but to use undersea cables to export clean energy to Europe, the U.K. and beyond.

It’s just one example of how trade – and open cross-border flows of environmental products, services, and ideas – are driving the shift to a sustainable global economy. 

Trade is indispensable for delivering green technologies to wherever they are needed; it drives down their costs; and spurs further innovation.

Moreover, just as countries can reap enormous economic gains from trade by specializing in what they are relatively good at, our planet can reap enormous environmental gains from trade when countries specialize in what they are green at.

For Morocco, such environmental comparative advantages could mean solar power; for the United States, green hydrogen; for Argentina, sustainable agriculture; for South Africa and many African Countries, minerals for rechargeable batteries; and so on.

But to maximize these green gains from trade, we need to do more, including:

•        reducing barriers to trade in environmental goods and services;

•        greening WTO subsidy rules and repurposing trade distorting subsidies as we are doing with our successful $22 billion harmful fisheries subsidies agreement.

•        better coordinating our climate and trade policies;

•      and helping poorer countries access the financing and technologies they need to participate in a green global economy.

We must also properly craft and enforce the rules for green trade. This means reforming the only global system in the world where countries can bring and settle their trade disputes in a civilized manner. Please support the WTO to reimagine and rebuild its Dispute Settlement System by its 13^th Ministerial end Feb 2024 in Abu Dhabi. It is one way to ensure we keep driving towards green trade and a low carbon emission future.

Session 2 “One Family”

Thank you Chair, excellencies

In our fractious world, it’s easy to overlook a basic fact:

Our open and integrated global economy has delivered unprecedented progress. Since the end of the Cold War, the world economy has tripled in size, 1.5 billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty, literacy has expanded, and life expectancy has increased around the world.

But progress has not come for everybody, everywhere, at the same pace. While most countries have moved ahead, others have been left behind. Even within rich countries, economic progress has often involved disruption and inequality.

Add COVID-19, the war in Ukraine, and the climate crisis to the mix, and many have begun to question global economic integration and call for rolling it back.

We are in danger of misdiagnosing the world’s problems – and taking a path that makes the challenges we face harder to solve.

My thesis is if we want to build one family, a retreat from global trade is certainly not the answer. A retreat would reduce growth and innovation – diminishing job opportunities, including for women and young people, and leaving us less equipped to upgrade education and social policies. Constraining cross-border flows of critical goods and technologies would make us less resilient and more vulnerable to future shocks. Fragmenting global markets would make it harder for countries to grow their way out of poverty – harming the world’s poorest the most.

Today’s global economy is not perfect. But the vulnerabilities exposed by recent crises provide an opportunity to reinvent global trade. Instead of less globalization, we need more, better, and improved globalization – what we are calling ‘re-globalization’.

That means opening trade, diversifying supply chains, and bringing in people and places still on the margins. It means leveraging the rise of services, digital, and green trade – and connecting women and MSMEs to international markets. And it means improving social policies at home so that people perceive openness to trade as an opportunity more than a threat.

I urge you to lead in reforming the WTO at our 13th ministerial conference – so to it can drive a more inclusive, more sustainable globalization.