The Brics and the challenges of global economic governance

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to explore how new challenges are affecting the Global Trading System and how it can evolve to face them. They are: i) the deadlock to move multilateral negotiations at the WTO, ii) the fragmentation of trade rules by the multiplication of preferential agreements, iii) the arrival of a new model of global production and trade leaded by global value chains, and iv) the imposition of new sets of regulations by non-governmental organizations to reflect the concerns of consumers in the North based on their precautionary attitude about sustainability of products made in the World. The consequence is that the lack of any multilateral order in this scenario is creating a cacophony of rules and developing a new regulatory war of the Global North against the Global South.