WTO Looks To Cut Trade Deals As It Fate Hangs

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is facing one of its most critical moments, the culmination of years of decline and inefficiency.

Photo Insert: The Geneva-based body, which has only been around for a quarter-century, brings together 164 countries to help ensure smooth and fair international trade and to settle trade disputes.

Now may be the time to turn the tide and reemerge as a champion of free and fair trade — or face an uncertain future, Jamey Keaten and Paul Wiseman reported for the Associated Press (AP).

For the first time in four and a half years, government ministers from WTO countries will meet for four days beginning Sunday, June 12, to discuss issues such as overfishing of the seas, COVID-19 vaccines for the developing world, and food security at a time when Russia's war in Ukraine has prevented the export of millions of tons of Ukrainian grain to developing countries.

In recent days, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala expressed "cautious optimism" that progress could be made on at least one of four issues expected to dominate the meeting—fisheries subsidies, agriculture, pandemic response, and organization reform—spokesman Fernando Puchol said.

Diplomats and trade teams have been working "flat out — long, long hours" to provide at least one "clean text" for a possible agreement — something ministers can simply rubber-stamp without having to negotiate — on one of those issues, Puchol told reporters Friday. "Right now, it's difficult to predict a result," he further disclosed.

The Geneva-based body, which has only been around for a quarter-century, brings together 164 countries to help ensure smooth and fair international trade and to settle trade disputes.

According to some outside experts, the main accomplishment of the meeting may simply be getting the ministers to the table.

“The multilateral trading system is in a bad way. The Ukraine situation is not helping,” said Clemens Boonekamp, an independent trade policy analyst and former head of WTO’s agricultural division.

“But the mere fact that they are coming together is a sign of a respect for the system.”

Alan Wolff, a former WTO deputy director-general, sounded optimistic that members could make at least some headway. They might reach an agreement, he said, to help relieve a looming global food crisis caused by the Ukraine war by ensuring the UN World Food Program is exempt from food export bans imposed by WTO countries eager to feed their own people.

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