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.