The Decline of the WTO
Editorial
The Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2013
The
trade body picks a Brazilian who helped to scuttle the Doha talks.
A depressing rule of international
institutions is that whatever their founding intentions they inevitably evolve
to serve themselves or their worst members more than their original cause. The
latest example is the World Trade Organization, which began as a rule-making
body to promote free trade and has drifted toward protectionism when it isn't
useless.
That drift was illustrated last week with
the election of Brazilian Roberto Azevedo as new WTO director-general. The
55-year-old career diplomat beat out Mexican economist Herminio Blanco, who had
U.S. support and has a reputation as a more assertive free trader. Mr. Azevedo
is by all accounts a charming diplomat who won because of support among
developing nations.
Yet he won that support in large part by
helping to scuttle the Doha round of free-trade talks. Mr. Azevedo was Brazil's
chief Doha negotiator, and opposition to freer trade in manufacturing by
Brazil, India, South Africa and other emerging economic powers made a
worthwhile Doha deal impossible. It's now moribund.
The result has been that the WTO is
increasingly a bystander as the world's economic powers ignore the global talks
and pursue their own bilateral and regional trade pacts. The most important
trade diplomacy today is taking place within the trans-Pacific and Europe-U.S.
negotiations.
"I think we're getting a very sick
patient. The WTO at this point in time is not doing well. It's almost like the
next DG [director-general] is coming to the operating table with a very sick
patient on it," Mr. Azevedo conceded in the lead up to the vote. No one
doubts his diagnosis. The question is whether he's Dr. Kevorkian.
According to IMF data, Brazil is among the
most protected economies in the Americas. If his goal is to spread his
country's trade model, Mr. Azevedo will guarantee that the WTO will become even
less relevant. Let's hope he tries to do a Nixon goes to China and overcome his
previous Doha handiwork.
