Donald Trump’s block on WTO judges creates ‘doomsday scenario’ for world trade disputes
- The World Trade Organisation’s appeals body will be paralysed in December with US President Donald Trump blocking crucial reappointments of judges
- Analysts say this may mean international trade disputes may never see resolution, leading to ‘chaos’ and damage to global trade
This story is part of an ongoing series on US-China relations, jointly produced by the South China Morning Post and POLITICO, with reporting from Asia and the United States.
The world will not end on December 10, yet for many who have spent their careers within the global trading oversight system, the date has apocalyptic consequences.
I don’t think up to this point the [Trump] administration has been satisfied by the type of answers it has been getting from other members
The United States does not appear to be eager to avert a crisis until other countries admit that the WTO – part negotiating forum and part trade policeman – has failed in multiple ways.
“I don’t think up to this point the [Trump] administration has been satisfied by the type of answers it has been getting from other members,” said Stephen Vaughn, who stepped down as general counsel to US trade representative Robert Lighthizer in May.
The looming crisis exposes deeper cracks at the WTO. The consensus-based organisation, which includes 164 countries with wildly divergent stages of economic development, has largely failed to work out new rules for freer trade since it was formed in 1995. Negotiations launched in Doha in 2001 were finally declared dead by the US in 2015 after yielding few results.
The US could use its agenda to neuter the Geneva-based WTO even further after Bloomberg reported earlier this month that it had floated the possibility of blocking the organisation’s biennial budget approval. Without money, the global body would effectively shut down next year.
