Inside Out | Amid the pandemic and US-China decoupling threats, new WTO chief has her work cut out

Name: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala becomes first African, first woman director general of WTO
Uploaded: 2021-03-07T21:15:06.000Z
Duration: 2 min 3 s
Description: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala becomes first African, first woman director general of WTO

In the short term, the WTO should aim to achieve a consensus on medical supply chains and help get Covid-19 vaccine shots delivered

In the longer term, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has to defuse the threat of economic decoupling between the US and China

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Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is seen at her home in Potomac, Maryland, as she was confirmed as the first woman and first African leader of the WTO, on February 15. Photo: AFP

David Dodwell

Published: 5:15am, 8 Mar 2021Updated: 5:15am, 8 Mar 2021

There was more than a sense of a spring clean on the shores of Lake Geneva last week, as the World Trade Organization’s new director general rolled up her sleeves to begin the long and challenging process of bringing new relevance to a body that has delivered little but disappointment.

From the high-water mark of enthusiasm for multilateralism and international trade liberalisation, with the WTO’s founding in 1995, the trade body’s trajectory has been pretty consistently downwards. With the frustrations and eventual failure of the Doha Round of liberalisation negotiations, the only thing to show for its 26 years of efforts is an underwhelming Trade Facilitation Agreement signed in Bali in 2013.

The Trump administration’s four-year love-affair with playground-bully unilateralism – and its wilful destruction of the WTO’s important trade dispute settlement role – only added momentum to the body’s precipitous slump into inconsequence and marginalisation.

But with Joe Biden’s new US administration bringing a renewed spirit of cooperation to international affairs, hopes have been revived that the WTO’s dignity and relevance will be restored. In the debate to “end it or mend it”, there has been a decisive shift in favour of mending, which makes the arrival of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the WTO’s new director general significant, and a source of cautious optimism.

The Trump administration blocked her confirmation for months, claiming she had no career expertise in trade. But everyone else in the 164-economy group disagreed. Experience as Nigeria’s finance and foreign ministers, as the World Bank’s managing director, and chair of the board of global vaccine alliance Gavi seemed substantial enough.

02:03

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala becomes first African, first woman director general of WTO

Arriving for her first WTO General Council meeting as director general last week, she was under no illusions about the challenges ahead: “I am coming into one of the most important institutions in the world and we have a lot of work to do.” Earlier, she said: “The WTO is too important to allow it to be slowed down, paralysed and moribund.”

.css-1m2rp1p{color:#34b8b5;}Inside Out | Amid the pandemic and US-China decoupling threats, new WTO chief has her work cut out

Inside Out | Amid the pandemic and US-China decoupling threats, new WTO chief has her work cut out