No Way Out? The WTO in the Whirlwind of Trump II Trade Policy

The World Trade Organization (WTO) relevance has eviscerated in recent years. The question raised nowadays in policy circles is whether the ascent of Donald J. Trump to the US Presidency will be the coup de grâce for the multilateral edifice. What seemed unthinkable in the mid-nineties when the WTO saw the light of day is more than a distinct possibility right now. The proximate causes are easy to identify but the ultimate causes are heterogenous and diverse. Disentangling them in an effort to apportion the blame is a quixotic, thankless indeed test. But it is a necessary exercise in the quest for solutions. While solutions pass through an effective address of the ultimate causes, the WTO must first navigate through the unchartered territory that proximate causes have presented it with. The multilateral system deserves to be saved not simply for making gains from trade possible in the last eighty years or so, but crucially because it provides the only genuine interface across a swath of (regulatory) policies around the world. Crumbling down of the WTO could have important negative external effects as far as (necessary) world-wide cooperation in other areas, such as the fight to avert climate change, is concerned.