WTO is facing a legitimacy crisis now

The decline of the WTO, a threat to global stability EDITORIAL Le Monde The World Trade Organization's key role in the coordination of world trade is being increasingly questioned. This is a dangerous slope, which risks leading to the primacy of the law of the strongest, at the worst possible time. Published on December 28, 2022, at 11:41 am (Paris) 2 min read The World Trade Organization (WTO) is facing an existential crisis. Since its creation in January 1995, the institution has accompanied an unprecedented expansion of international trade, by making trade more fluid through the lowering of customs barriers and the convergence of standards between countries. China's accession to the organization in 2001 dramatically accelerated this process of globalization, which promised greater economic prosperity and geopolitical stability for all. But in the space of a few years, the machine has seized up. The financial crisis of 2008, political mobilization against deindustrialization in developed countries, the rise of sovereignty, China's challenge to the hegemony of American power, and finally the weakening of supply chains caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have all questioned the virtues of globalization, threatening the WTO with obsolescence. In just a few years, the organization has become an administrative machine whose unwieldiness is matched only by its inability to build consensus among its 164 members. While negotiations stall, disputes proliferate, and customs and normative barriers are being erected everywhere. A few days ago, during the last WTO General Council, the director general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, could only deplore the organization's inability to find a new impetus. A system in bad shape