Me? Yes! You? Well, last week, a bunch of us trade buffs were asked just that: to input into the Prime Minister's global governance report for the G20 French Presidency. And boy, did we have some juicy ideas - and that's probably why economists are not in charge.
Three hours and the top brains from around the world stormed away in a little room in Westminster. Invitees included 30 high-level trade experts from UK, Geneva, Brussels, Addis Ababa and India, representing an alphabet soup of businesses, NGOs (TJM, TUC), academics (ODI, ICTSD) and international institutions such as UNCTAD, UNECA and WTO and between us I think we cracked it.
Consultation was a great idea from Government. Ideas on how to improve surveillance of protectionism, how to use trade monitoring results, how the dispute settlement system can be re-vamped to give developing countries a chance, how negotiations could be re-structured to try to end the eternal Doha round and even on what Pascal Lamy's job description should look like poured forth.
But I won't go into that because, right now, the fact of the matter is that the mood in Geneva - the world's international trade bubble - has never been more pessimistic. Trade talks have collapsed after 10 years of improvised negotiation. The economic turmoil we are living through in Europe and the US means that no parliament will approve a concession given to a competitor in an emerging economy to get ahead. Improving the functioning of the WTO is so 1999.
This century there is an elephant in the room; there has been a tectonic shift in the global power balance and our global institutions no longer reflect the reality of the new world order. Tweaks to the WTO system are not enough. Discussing changes to the WTO without discussing what the WTO should set out to achieve is redundant.
As put by Nicolas Imboden, Executive Director of the IDEAS centre, 'there is no leadership and nobody feels empowered or required to put the systemic issues ahead of short term national interests.'
In short, Mr Cameron's team were asking the wrong questions. Was this meeting ever going to be a real policy-making agenda-shaping transformational opportunity? Perhaps the perceived awkwardness pervading the room was acknowledging the answer was no. I must admit this is at odds with Cameron's letter to the G20 this week calling on world leaders to 'consider innovative approaches to deliver progress in a multilateral trade deal'.
A great opportunity was missed by having these great minds in one room and not facilitating a real debate on how the WTO can respond to today's challenges. Perhaps in another room in Westminster this discussion is taking place, like us, behind closed doors.
Trade liberalisation is happening through multilateral, bilateral and unilateral means in government and through multinational companies around the world as they trade with each other, invest in each other and control global trade flows.
Did you know just three multinational companies grind 40% of the world's cocoa? Fairtrade is the only certification scheme whose primary purpose is to tackle poverty and empower producers in developing countries. Thanks to you Fairtrade confectionary sales now make up 10% of the UK chocolate confectionary market and 120,000 farmers are feeling the love. Wouldn't it be great though if a multilateral organization equipped to regulate trade and with a mandate to assist developing countries integrate into the global economy could take on making trade fair too?
If the WTO is going to regulate international trade today it must respond to these issues. It must show its worth and move beyond the narrow set of legal texts it inherited in 1995.