WTO chief in Geneva warns of ‘chaos’ if global trade system collapses

WTO Director promises "chaos" without multilateral system Keystone-SDA

The head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has warned of “chaos” if the global trading system were to fall apart. But keeping things as they are is not an option, WTO Director General Ngozi Okonjo‑Iweala said on Wednesday in Geneva.

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“If the WTO were to vanish, countries could simply do as they pleased,” Okonjo‑Iweala told UN‑accredited correspondents in Geneva. She pointed to the protectionist spiral of the 1930s as a warning. “No one wants to see that bad film again,” she said.

Reforming the organisation will be a central issue at the ministerial meeting in Yaoundé, Cameroon, at the end of March. Delegates will consider a work programme aimed at setting the WTO’s future direction, after years in which the institution came under heavy pressure from the Trump administration.

Okonjo‑Iweala avoided speculating about the WTO’s chances of survival if talks fail, a subject the facilitator of the negotiations, Ambassador Petter Olberg, had touched on. “What we do know,” she said, “is that the organisation needs reform,” particularly to keep pace with changes driven by new technologies.

Translated from French by AI/sp

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