It was 1992. I had been sitting for some time staring out over Lake Geneva, waiting to meet Arthur Dunkel, director general of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, horse-trader-in-chief for the Uruguay Round negotiations on trade liberalisation and on the creation of the World Trade Organisation. His assistant had popped in several times to apologise for the delay. At last, the genial Swiss diplomat rushed through the door, the shoulder of his suit torn and his shirt collar askew: “My apologies … Trade negotiations can be difficult, but South Korean farmers are the toughest of them all.” Today, Dunkel is but one of a long queue of photos on the wall of the Centre William Rappard, the WTO’s headquarters set on the tranquil shores of Lake Geneva. Since he stepped down in 1993, there have been six WTO directors general, and all have struggled either to make their mark, or to build on the foundations laid by Dunkel during more than a decade of footslogging to complete the Uruguay Round. With Brazilian diplomat Roberto Azevedo stepping down prematurely next month with virtually no trade liberalising achievements to his name during a six-year tenure, the battle is on to appoint a successor. And the stakes could not be higher. After six years of being throttled by a sceptical United States, culminating last December in the strangulation of the WTO’s dispute settlement process, the time has come for the WTO to do or die. In the face of the “America First” unilateralism of the Trump administration, the WTO’s new leader will be challenged to lead the charge in defending multilateralism and championing the benefits of free trade and investment. And as the world economy continues to plunge into its deepest recession in a century, the WTO’s success will make a huge difference in the pain we will feel, and the pace of recovery. Let me not exaggerate. The powers of the director general of the WTO are powerfully limited by the ambassadors representing its 164 members. As the Financial Times ’ Alan Beattie noted, the director general is more like “a butler who arranges gatherings rather than a head of household who decides what everyone will do”. When we complain about Azevedo’s failure, it is really a failure of the national ambassadors who act as his bosses – in particular, the bosses from the US, the European Union and China. Reform the WTO to champion post-pandemic economic recovery Complaints were frequent that Azevedo, a Brazilian former ambassador to the WTO, lacked the political heft to cut through these deep national rivalries. With nominations for a successor closed on July 8, that need for heft will be on many people’s minds. Conspicuously absent from the eight candidates is anyone from the EU, where “Big Phil” Hogan , the EU’s ebullient trade commissioner, and Arancha Gonzalez Laya , Spain’s impressive foreign minister, had been touted. Also conspicuously absent is any US or Chinese candidate, for the obvious reason that given global trade relations, they would be far too divisive. Recall the diplomatic contest in February over a new head of the World Intellectual Property Organisation, where China’s massively experienced Wipo deputy head, Wang Binyang , had been expected to be a shoo-in. In the end, Daren Tang from Singapore was brought forward as a compromise candidate. So, enough about who is not in. Who are the candidates in the frame and the front runners? Clear outsiders will be Tudor Ulianovschi from tiny Moldova, a country sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, and Mohammad Maziad Al-Tuwaijri from Saudi Arabia. Another outsider is Mexico’s Jesus Seade who, as well as having been Mexico’s WTO ambassador, also served many years as vice-president of Hong Kong’s Lingnan University. Rightly or wrongly, many would regard a Mexican candidate as too deep in the pocket of the US. Another clear outsider is British former trade minister Liam Fox, who is seen as damaged by his Brexit rhetoric. He infamously and extravagantly claimed that he would be signing 40 separate replacement agreements for United Kingdom trade with EU member states “one second after midnight” upon leaving the EU. WTO ambassadors saw this as reflecting a naive and cavalier disregard for the time-consuming complexity of trade agreements. South Korea’s trade minister Yoo Myung-hee has a good reputation but, as with Seade, is likely to be seen as too close to the US. Egypt’s Abdel-Hamid Mamdouh, who for many years was the WTO’s top services trade expert, lacks a political track record, and so would be seen as lacking the political heft needed to be more than a “butler”. Could China-US conflict evolve into rival spheres of economic influence? That, fascinatingly, leaves two impressive African women as front runners : Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala from Nigeria, who has been the country’s finance minister and worked at the World Bank, and Amina Mohamed from Kenya, who was the country’s foreign affairs minister from 2013 to 2018, and who chaired the 2015 WTO ministerial meeting in Nairobi and the WTO’s General Council in 2005. Both have been early out of the blocks with their campaigns, emphasising the urgent need for the WTO to lead the global multilateral effort to roll back the surge of protectionist measures introduced since the beginning of the pandemic, and to get the WTO’s dispute settlement process back on its feet. Laying the ground for the delayed 12th WTO ministerial meeting – likely to be held in Kazakhstan next June – will be key, with emphasis on new e-commerce trade rules , an attack on fish and fossil fuel subsidies, and a focus on properly defining the “special differential treatment” rules that allow the world’s poorest countries to be exempt from certain trade liberalising obligations. The WTO has set a three-month deadline to agree on a successor, but most expert observers say this will be a challenge. As the FT ’s Trade Secrets blog noted last week, the consensus-based selection process is “so ponderous it makes the election of a new pope look like a sudden-death penalty shoot-out”. And that is assuming that the US does not petulantly veto the whole process – in which case, prepare for six months of WTO paralysis. David Dodwell researches and writes about global, regional and Hong Kong challenges from a Hong Kong point of view