The World Trade Organization is on life support. Will Trump’s new rules finish it off? |
The United States has now withdrawn from 66 international organisations, conventions and treaties, illegally invaded Venezuela, and promoted an “America First” agenda in its new National Security Strategy.
This all signals the collapse of a global system that has operated for the past 60 years. The old world order – driven by hyper-globalisation and US hegemonic power – is in its death throes, but a new era is yet to be born.
We now face a deepening ideological, strategic and military conflict over what shape it will take. The global “free trade” regime, overseen by the World Trade Organization (WTO), is one such battleground.
Largely designed to serve its strategic and corporate interests, the US now sees the WTO as a liability because of the economic ascendancy of China and a domestic populist backlash against globalisation and free trade.
But US antipathy to the current multilateral trade regime is not exclusive to the Trump administration. America has long resisted binding itself to the trade rules it demands other countries obey.
Congress reserved the power to review US membership when it authorised joining the WTO in 1994. Since then, both Republican and Democrat administrations have........