The Crisis in World Trade

The future of the world trading system depends critically on reinvigorating the WTO and policy change in the largest trading nations. To sustain multilateralism, urgent action is needed to avoid a disruption of global trade and its fragmentation into trading blocs where relations are based on relative power instead of rules. Smallest players whose trade is least covered by bilateral or regional agreements will be at the greatest disadvantage. All countries will incur enormous costs only to try and reinvent a system that is already in place today under the WTO.