How China can help rescue the WTO, at a critical time for global trade
- The World Trade Organisation is floundering. Its trade dispute settlement system is falling apart, and it can’t seem to seal a minor deal on global fishing subsidies. This is the hour for China to honour its commitment to multilateralism
It is a measure of how far the World Trade Organisation has slipped in its position to set global trade rules that the present high ambition for the next WTO ministerial conference in Kazakhstan next June is focused on the one and only live negotiation – cutting fisheries subsidies.
“This is the only live negotiation in progress,” said one top business lobbyist in Geneva. These may be slim pickings, but they appear to be the only pickings within the WTO’s reach.
For that matter, the WTO’s achievements since its creation in 1995 have been remarkable in their modesty. Apart from the 1996 Information Technology Agreement, which according to the WTO covers trade in products worth US$1.3 trillion each year, the controversy and conflict over the Doha Development Round has since 2001 frustrated every initiative bar one – the Trade Facilitation Agreement reached in Bali in 2013 aimed at simplifying cross-border trade rules.
One can sympathise with US frustrations over the barren fruit of WTO ambassadors’ efforts over the past quarter of a century.