WTO at 30 after decades of challenges

When I sat down to write an article “WTO at 10” for a commemorative book for the occasion in 2005, little did I know of the huge challenges the WTO and the multilateral trading system would have to confront in the following two decades.

- Supachai Panitchpakdi

During its first decade in existence, the WTO basked in a mood of cautious optimism as its membership continued to expand and the process of globalisation was in full swing, also helped by the launch of the Doha Development Agenda and the joining of China in December 2001. The impact of China’s WTO accession on the Chinese economy itself and on the global trading system has been unprecedented, part of which I have elaborated in my coauthored book (2002) with Mark Clifford on China and the WTO: Changing China, Changing World Trade.

During its first ten years, the WTO stood the test not only arising from the Asian financial crisis (1997-98), the massive protests at the third Ministerial Conference (MC) in Seattle in 1999, but also some sensitive and high-profile dispute settlement cases. The crisis-hit countries in Asia could find their way out of the predicament, not least because the rest of the world kept its markets open and absorbed their exports. Their current accounts became more balanced, and trade has proved itself to be a powerful remedy, more so than the counterproductive conditional IMF standby support.

In the meantime, the WTO's dispute settlement system has functioned as a remarkably efficient and effective mechanism for resolving trade conflicts between WTO members. Emeritus Professor Giorgio Sacerdoti, an international law professor at Bocconi University in Milan and former member of the Appellate Body offered in a book on the contribution of the dispute settlement system this comment: “The past ten years show the vitality of the dispute settlement system as had been envisaged, as well as its central position within the WTO as an element capable of ensuring respect of agreed rules”