2. ATTACK: Current US policy attacks the WTO — only cooperation reverses that.

The United States is challenging the very existence of the WTO. Three scenarios may be possible over the next several years.

1) The USA continues to attack the WTO, regardless of who is elected President in 2020. It is worth noting that President Obama started the process of weakening the WTO and that Senator Bernie Sanders and other prominent Democrats have been opposed to international trade agreements that they believe have harmed American workers.

2) China and America negotiate an agreement, and the WTO agrees to significant reforms.

3) China and America decouple their two economies and enter a trade Cold War. To counter-act America First actions, Europe, China and many other members of the WTO could develop a wide-ranging agreement that would exclude the USA and continue the dispute settlement process of the WTO. A WTO without the United States is feasible due to the growing interactions among Europe, Asia and Africa, which are increasing their infrastructure and trade connections. Moreover, 86% of the world’s population now lives on these three geographically linked continents and the Western Hemisphere accounts for only 14% of the world’s population. In two recent books, The Future is Asian and Connectography, Parag Khanna details the growing economic and infrastructure relationships being developed between Europe and Asia whose trade now exceeds that of Asia and North America (Khanna, 2019). The possibility of a worldwide coalition without the United States could offset American isolationism and the related ideology of the United States being the indispensable nation as articulated by Madeline Albright, the Clinton Administration Secretary of State. This recent arrogance of the United States as the indispensable center of the world is in contrast to President John F. Kennedy’s statement in November 1961 that the citizens of the world “face problems which do not lend themselves to easy or quick or permanent solutions. And we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient — that we are only 6 percent of the world's population — that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind — that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity — and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.” In the spirit of these remarks, the GATT launched the successful Kennedy Round in the 1960s that led to major expansion of GATT activities in a 1967 agreement signed by 62 countries (Norwood, 1969). A cooperative attitude by Americans in the next decade could lead to significant improvements in the WTO.

Globalization has been controversial, especially the political dynamics among rich and developing countries, but as former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said, “Arguing against globalization is like arguing against the law of gravity” (Khanna, 2016). The 2019 Nobel Laureates in Economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, began a 2020 Foreign Affairs article, “How Poverty Ends,” by describing how, since 1980, the income of the bottom 50% of the world has doubled and that extreme poverty has dropped from nearly two billion in 1990 to less than 700 million. Much of this improvement has been in China and India, which have benefitted enormously from international business fueled by globalization. The WTO and its Dispute Settlement Process has been the referee for trade since 1995. One of the giants of the European Enlightenment, John Locke, said, in 1689, “Wherever laws ends, tyranny begins.” Let us hope that international trade does not become a Darwinian jungle where the powerful demand subservience from others. An intelligent WTO 2.0 with compassionate policies and processes to help developing nations, in conjunction with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, could bring progress to every corner of the world.