WTO director-general – Trade β Blog

WTO senior officials face struggle to avoid distractions ‘elsewhere’

The challenge for officials from capitals is to keep the multilateral trading system up-to-date. How next week’s meeting is organised might help

UPDATE October 30, 2023—The G7 trade ministers’ statement issued in Japan on October 2023 covers a lot of these issues.

UPDATE October 25, 2023—As we thought, little has emerged on the substance, particularly whether the officials narrowed any gaps on substance, or showed they were receptive to others’ concerns and therefore prepared to move from existing positions.

The chairs’ summary (with oral reports from break-out sessions) and the WTO website news story are optimistic — more than some might be — but mainly based on the process and the tone, at least as far as we can tell from their descriptions.

For example, they were encouraged by the agreement to bring forward the target for concluding a fisheries subsidies text to the end of this year. But what does it really signify? Does it show the chances of a deal have improved? Or is it simply practical — that a text is needed by about that time if a deal is to be concluded by the February Ministerial Conference. There was no report of any movement in the widely differing positions on the text.

The rest of their summary seems similar, and includes some floated views that will not work.

Whether that translates into genuine progress in the final months of the year remains to be seen. Which is more-or-less what we suggested.

By Peter Ungphakorn and Robert Wolfe
POSTED OCTOBER 19, 2023 | UPDATED NOVEMBER 1, 2023

In the middle of last month, a well-known journalist specialising in trade made “one of my infrequent trips” to the World Trade Organization in Geneva. He found that “the big trade news” during the WTO’s high profile annual public forum was “unilateral action that took place elsewhere”.

That just about sums up the situation facing senior officials of WTO member governments as they head for one of their own infrequent trips to the WTO’s Geneva offices.

On Monday and Tuesday (October 23–24, 2023), officials from capitals have been summoned to Geneva to try to drag themselves, their counterparts and their Geneva delegations further along the road towards meaningful results when their ministers gather in Abu Dhabi early next year (February 26–29, 2024).

Anniversary: 15 years ago an attempt to conclude the Doha Round collapsed

After the collapse, the talks fell into decline. But several agreements have been reached from within the Doha Round’s agenda

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JULY 30, 2023 | UPDATED JULY 30, 2023

Saturday July 29 was the 15th anniversary of the day World Trade Organization (WTO) talks broke down, and ministers and officials failed to reach agreement in the Doha Round of negotiations.

“Day 9: Talks collapse despite progress on a list of issues,” says a headline on the WTO website from July 29, 2008.

With Pascal Lamy as director-general, the WTO’s public information on negotiations was more open and less prone to positive spin than it is now. The same goes for Lamy himself.

“It is no use beating around the bush,” he told journalists after speaking to ministers and officials. “This meeting has collapsed. Members have not been able to bridge their differences.”

WTO members achieve breakthrough, but the tough part is what happens next

It might seem churlish to draw attention to what was lacking, but the achievements that were rightly hailed are not the end of the story.

By Peter Ungphakorn and Robert Wolfe
POSTED JUNE 30, 2022 | UPDATED JUNE 30, 2022

As a beautiful sun rose over the World Trade Organization’s lakeside headquarters in Geneva on June 17, 2022, exhausted delegates sealed a package of decisions and declarations that would give the beleaguered WTO new direction for the next couple of years.

Much has already been written about the achievement of the 12–17 June WTO Ministerial Conference, after it was extended by almost two days of sometimes chaotic round-the-clock bargaining.

Most of the analysis focuses on what was achieved, often with a sense of relief that the WTO was back on track, mixed with a warning that much still needs to be done.

Perhaps the biggest success was that a package was agreed by ministers, including an Outcome Document — which the previous ministerial conference failed to do.

Often missing is recognition of how hard it was to achieve this limited outcome.

Have we just seen the funeral of the WTO ‘single undertaking’?

The WTO director-general says she discouraged negotiators from trading give-and-take across issues

By Robert Wolfe
POSTED JUNE 21, 2022 | UPDATED JUNE 21, 2022

Observers of multiple World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial conferences felt gloomy early during the June 12–17 meeting, when Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala warned against mingling the issues.

She was reported to have urged ministers to make trade-offs within the same issue rather than across the package of issues.

In an interview with the Financial Times’ Alan Beattie (paywalled) she confirmed her approach.

“Sometimes, all this leveraging and cross connections between outcomes I think in the past has led to the failure to achieve anything, because then everything just doesn’t work and collapses. I was really determined from the get-go that wasn’t going to happen and I was trying to discourage members from linking one thing to another,” she said.

I was trying to discourage members from linking one thing to another

— Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala,
Financial times

Those of us who analyse the WTO have a mental model of how members could reach agreement. When the process seems too slow, or it fails, analysts think: if the Secretariat or members could do it differently, then the obstacles could be overcome. This reasoning is counterfactual, meaning something that has not happened but might happen under different conditions.

New WTO head’s first statements sail close to the wind

Okonjo-Iweala faces a crash course in WTO diplomacy, a car crash, or a third way. Which will it be?

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED FEBRUARY 18, 2021 | UPDATED MARCH 2, 2021

‘Someone has said that the definition of madness is doing the same thing you’ve done for years.” So remarked Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala shortly after she was accepted as the World Trade Organization’s next director-general on February 15, 2021.

She was speaking in an online press conference, outlining her view of where the WTO might be heading and how she might contribute.

Her first statements shed light on her intentions at the WTO and signal possible delicate times ahead. With some forthright suggestions on issues where members are divided, her approach has risks. (See also her acceptance statement in the WTO General Council.)

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the new WTO chief, but let’s not get carried away

The director-general’s powers are limited, so don’t expect miracles. And don’t blame her if problems stay unresolved

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED FEBRUARY 15, 2021 | UPDATED FEBRUARY 18, 2021

Now that Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has been confirmed as the next director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) it’s tempting to see light at the end of the tunnel for the troubled negotiating forum and guardian of the resulting agreements.

First woman director-general. First African. Finally, someone at the helm after almost a year effectively without a leader. All those headlined proclamations are true. The excitement is justified, to some extent.

Yes, the WTO needs fixing—but not the way this NY Times piece imagines

Farah Stockman’s ideas won’t work because they don’t ‘get’ the WTO

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED DECEMBER 27, 2020 | UPDATED DECEMBER 28, 2020

There’s a little anecdote on the World Trade Organization’s website, right at the start of “Understanding the WTO”. As the name suggests, “Understanding” is the principal explainer of how the WTO works. The anecdote goes:

Participants in a recent radio discussion on the WTO were full of ideas. The WTO should do this, the WTO should do that, they said.
One of them finally interjected: “Wait a minute. The WTO is a table. People sit round the table and negotiate. What do you expect the table to do?”

If we keep that in mind as we read Farah Stockman’s New York Times opinion piece (“The W.T.O. Is Having a Midlife Crisis”, December 17, 2020), then it’s easier to see why so much of the piece is wrong.

US lifts objections that deadlocked the WTO over its next director-general

‘Troika’ had announced Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala enjoyed broadest support, but US had refused to join consensus

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED OCTOBER 28, 2020 | UPDATED FEBRUARY 15, 2021

On February 15, 2021, Nigerian Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was confirmed as the World Trade Organization’s next director-general. The decision was by a consensus of the WTO’s membership. See Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the new WTO chief, but let’s not get carried away.

This was made possible 10 days earlier when the new Biden administration in the US announced its “strong support” for her, ending three months of deadlock.

By then, South Korean candidate Yoo Myung-hee withdrew her candidacy. By overturning the stance of the Trump administration and its US Trade Representative, Robert LIghthizer, Biden paved the way for Okonjo-Iweala to be selected by the necessary consensus.

What follows was written before the deadlock was broken.

Is the World Trade Organization choosing a saviour? Or a butler?

The 40-year record of previous office-holders shows how limited the WTO chief’s powers really are — worth keeping in mind as nominations for a new director-general open from June 8 to July 8

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JUNE 8, 2020 | UPDATED AUGUST 26, 2020

Nominations closed on July 8, 2020 after one month (from June 8) for governments to propose candidates for the new director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The organisation is in deep trouble and the timing looks bad although there are some pluses. But are the 164 member governments going to choose someone to rescue the WTO? Or does that overstate the powers of a person who might be better described as the WTO’s butler?