BERLIN: The chiefs of the IMF, WTO and OECD vowed on Monday in a joint statement to defend free trade against creeping protectionist trends, amid growing global alarm over US President Donald Trump’s “America First” call.

“Disappointing trade growth figures and the danger of increasing protectionist tendencies give us a clear incentive to support the international trading system even more,” said the statement, also signed by the heads of the World Bank and the ILO, as well as host of the meeting, German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The World Trade Organisation has forecasted that global trade would likely grow only within a range of 1.8pc to 3.1pc this year.

But of greater concern is the Trump administration’s attitude towards global commerce.

During his campaign, Trump described the WTO as a “disaster” and promised a more aggressive approach to open up foreign markets to US companies, including threatening to unilaterally imposing tariffs.

The US also refused at a G20 meeting in March to renew a long-standing anti-protectionist pledge, to the dismay of the group of top developed and developing nations.

At the meeting in Berlin, the leaders of the international organisations and Merkel also stressed the role of the WTO in creating “new growth, employment and development opportunities”.

In addition, they underlined their commitment to combating climate change — another key issue that was dropped at the G20 meeting because of US opposition.—AFP

‘Workers incomes shrinking’

Anwar Iqbal adds from Washing­ton: Salaries of workers are shrinking across the globe as the advance in technology reduces the jobs available to them, says a study the International Monetary Fund released on Monday.

The IMF World Economic Outlook for 2017 also projects that raise in US interest rates and a rising protectionist rhetoric in advanced economies would slow the growth of emerging economies this year.

“The labour share of income — the share of national income paid in wages, including benefits, to workers — has been on a downward trend in many countries,” the study reports.

The decline in labour’s share of national income was also reported in 29 of the world’s 50 largest economies between 1991 and 2014.

The IMF report identifies technology as “the largest contributor to the change in labour shares in the large majority of countries.”

A blog accompanying the report points out that this growing income inequality is also hurting the workers by concentrating capital in the hands of a few.

The report shows that in advanced economies, labour income shares began trending down in the 1980s and reached their lowest level of the past half century just prior to the global financial crisis of 2008-09. The shares have not recovered materially since.

In more than half of emerging market and developing economies, labour shares have also declined since the early 1990s. The larger economies within this group are the worst affected.

In some economies, declining labour shares result from the failure of product wage growth to keep up with weak productivity growth.

The decline in the labour share is related to income inequality because within the workforce, lower-skilled workers have borne the brunt of the fall in labour shares, the report adds.

Published in Dawn, April 11th, 2017