How Trump Is Killing the WTO

What’s happening in the world today reminds me of the classic phrase: “I gave you life; I will also kill you.” We are witnessing the accelerating degradation of basic international structures that form the foundation of Western, or rather, American, global hegemony.

The West once built these structures to expand its influence on the rest of the world and legitimize its own economic and political expansion. Now it is destroying them.

A clear example of this is the situation surrounding the World Trade Organization, which was created by the leaders of the Western world as a sort of supranational, universally recognized, planet-wide arbitrator that keeps an eye on trade processes.

Before Russia joined the organization, it had presented itself as something akin to a private gentleman’s club with special perks and extensive discounts for its members. Once Russia managed to get its membership card, the WTO went through a rebranding process and started portraying itself as a kind of United Nations for trade and economics.

Today, the organization’s standards have become extremely unfavorable for the U.S., but just leaving the party, a move that was previously quite effective, no longer works. When the club consists of 159 out of 200 officially recognized countries, and another 25 have observer status, a demonstrative shredding of one’s membership card changes little in the actual rules of trade. Nevertheless, Donald Trump has still found a way to have his cake and eat it too.

As the German newspaper Der Spiegel writes, for the last two years the White House has blocked the appointment of new members to the WTO Appellate Body, which investigates appeals regarding violations of international trade rules and sets fines for the rule breakers.

As a result, as per their terms of office, the Appellate Body’s employees have left, and yet their replacements have not been named. Out of seven positions across the entire department, at the moment there are only three members remaining, two of whose contracts end this month.

And that’s that. As soon as they pack up their desks, the Appellate Body itself will completely lose its ability to function. And without it, there is nobody in the WTO to investigate claims from a purely technical point of view. That is, unless someone is expecting a miracle at some point in the future.

Let’s face it; this is a good idea on Trump’s part. He is opening up the possibility of radically rebuilding U.S. foreign trade exclusively according to its own interests without the risk of rapidly running into harsh fines.

Of course, this can’t go on forever. As long as the U.S. is alone in muddying the waters, the structure will continue to buzz for some time from inertia. But as the number of those willing to join Washington and take advantage of this fortuitous situation grows, being a member of the club is completely losing its meaning. An exodus is coming, and this will eventually lead to the liquidation of the WTO as an organization.

Which, in fact, is what America needs. The world for which this instrument was created has come to its end, and without it, the instrument itself has already lost its necessity and has even become a hindrance.