Exclusive | Yoo Myung-hee: US-China style trade wars could proliferate without WTO ‘reinvention’, Korean candidate says
- South Korea’s candidate to lead the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Yoo Myung-hee, says dysfunction at the organisation may partly explain the US-China trade war
- Yoo has denied that her candidacy could be scuppered by regional politics, saying members will choose the best candidate for the role
Yoo Myung-hee said that the dysfunction at the WTO might be partly to blame for the trade spat which has run for more than two years, and has helped usher in a period of wider rivalry between the world’s two largest economies.
“Perhaps their trade tensions are to some extent due to the lack of a progress at the WTO, which for the last 25 years has not produced any multilateral trading agreements except for the trade facilitation agreement,” said Yoo, referring to the chronic failure of the Geneva institution to create a modern open trading system capable of dealing with contrasting economic systems.
“If the WTO fails again to reinvent itself, maybe more members might be compelled to deal with their disputes in their own way outside the WTO, either bilaterally or unilaterally,” Yoo said, adding that her long experience in negotiating with both parties qualifies her to act as a mediator, should she win the race to become the WTO’s next director general.
Yoo is one of the most highly-regarded of the eight candidates to lead the global trade body, having spent 25 years working in various trade roles for the South Korean government, culminating in her appointment as Seoul’s first female trade minister last year.