Individual trans-border partnerships as WTO alternative may drive world trade 50 years back - PM Medvedev

DVORIKI VILLAGE, August 2. /TASS/. Creation of individual trans-border partnerships as an alternative to the World Trade Organization (WTO) may drive the global trade 50-70 years back, Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday at the youth forum. "There is an attempt against the WTO. You know that trans-border partnerships created are essentially an alternative to the WTO," Medvedev said. "However, our position is that we should not fragment the global economy’s regulation field, because it will turn out in this case that we will be driven back to the situation of 50-70 years back, he added. This will result in individual agreements between countries not taken into consideration by other nations, leading to disruption of the global trade, Medvedev said. Such partnerships shall be created publicly and on the basis of main principles of the WTO, the Prime Minister said. "Only in such case new projects have a moral right to existence from our point of view," Medvedev added. Read more