Working Paper 22-7: WTO 2025: Getting Back to the Negotiating Table

The heads of delegation—the permanent representatives to the WTO who are ambassadors sitting as the General Council of the organization—have been delegated the full plenary powers of the Ministerial Conference. [...] Would the great powers of today be aligned? During the 1990s, the United States, the European Union, Japan, and Canada provided much of the leadership for the negotiation of the Uruguay Round. [...] At present, the United States, the original architect and guarantor of the trading system, has not demonstrated a willingness to make the necessary investment in the WTO to revive it as a negotiating forum and insist on the formal adoption of JSIs as WTO agreements. [...] In short, at this time neither the largest and most developed trading nations nor the mid-sized friends of the system are likely in the near future to force the shedding of the old order, an order kept in place by a consensus rule employed by JSI non-participants to block their adoption as a formal part of the WTO acquis. [...] They assume the existence of the WTO, they rely on the existence of the WTO, but they do not yet contribute directly to the future of the WTO.