The World Trade Organization (WTO), born on January 1, 1995, turns 30 at a time of paralysis both in negotiations and in its dispute resolution bodies, a crisis that could deepen from 2025 if the threats are carried out. protectionists of the new US Government.
The Geneva-based organization is heir to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a trade agreement born in 1948, in the context of the post-war multilateral approach, which the international community decided to provide institutionality for decades. after.
This was achieved after eight years of negotiations (1986-1994) of the so-called Uruguay Round, with the signing on April 15, 1994 of the Marrakesh Treaty that laid the foundations for the WTO, then with just over 120 member economies and today with 166 (Comoros and East Timor were the last to join in 2024).
The organization, one of the few multilateral organizations in which China has admitted Taiwan’s presence, has led to a liberalization of the economy, marked in these decades by globalization, which has benefited many developing countries, helping emerging powers such as the aforementioned Asian giant, India or Brazil, have caught up with other traditional countries in GDP.
“The WTO has anchored an open and predictable global economy that has managed to accelerate growth and development in the last three decades, in which 1.5 billion people have escaped extreme poverty,” he summarized, recalling the current Marrakesh agreement. general director of the organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
The WTO extended the agreements on trade in products already present in the GATT to trade in services and intellectual property, and provided itself with institutions such as the dispute settlement body, one of the few “courts” with binding decisions in the world. multilateral framework.
A powerful body in crisis
However, it is precisely this dispute mechanism that currently shows a major crisis in the WTO, since its highest instance, the appeals body, has ceased to be able to function for more than five years due to the refusal of just one of its members. members of the organization, the United States, to appoint new judges.
Dozens of sectoral disputes over tariffs or anti-subsidy measures considered abusive by one or several economies that are part of the WTO are currently in limbo, a problem that began with Donald Trump’s first government in the US but that of his successor, Joe Biden, does not wanted to remedy.
It is Trump’s return that causes the greatest concern in the WTO and in the general trade panorama, given his threats to impose strong tariffs on important partners of the world’s largest economy such as China (already a victim of them in the president’s previous term). , Mexico or Canada.
Within the WTO, it is expected that this, in addition to harming global exchanges, will increase trade disputes before the organization, disputes that, with the appeals body blocked, could last for years and have no solution until Washington gives its approval. arm to twist.
Negotiating paralysis
It is not the only paralysis suffered by an organization that, in negotiating matters, has shown decades of immobility, symbolized by the fact that during the GATT it managed to complete eight rounds of talks, including the last one in Uruguay, but with the WTO it has not finished none.
The Doha Round, the ninth in terms of global trade and the first that began under the umbrella of the WTO in 2001, has still not progressed for more than 20 years, due to differences between developing and developed countries over issues such as subsidies to agriculture, which the latter want to eliminate.
Yes, a historic agreement for the elimination of fishing subsidies was recently achieved, at the XII Ministerial Conference of the WTO held in Geneva in 2022, although attempts to expand this consensus failed at the XIII Ministerial in Abu Dhabi 2024 and for now There is pessimism that progress will be made at the next conference of trade ministers, scheduled in Cameroon in 2026.
“There are many challenges, but trade remains a vital tool to solve them and build a bright future for the world’s population,” Okonjo-Iweala summarized this year, in which she was re-elected as head of the WTO for the period 2025-2029. .
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