The Future of the WTO
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Since its 1947 inception as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has generally practiced an all‐or‐nothing approach to multilateral negotiations in which the consensus of all WTO members was for trade liberalization. Although this approach worked throughout the second half of the 20th century, its shortcomings were laid bare by the failure of the Doha Development Agenda and the inability of WTO members to achieve further broad, multilateral trade liberalization. Today, amid heightened animosity toward additional trade liberalization, prospects for the traditional consensus‐based approach seem dimmer than ever.
WTO members should not abandon their aim of liberalizing trade on a multilateral basis. But they should consider addressing the most pressing world trade issues through plurilateral agreements.
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