Relevance of World Trade Organization under scrutiny amid US president-elect’s protectionist stance
The sting of teargas was a price worth paying, said Michael Dolan, as he looks back on the Battle of Seattle and how the World Trade Organization’s attempt to break down the barriers to international trade was derailed by anti-globalisation protesters.
“The WTO has never recovered, it really hasn’t,” he said.
Dolan was one of the organisers of the blockades and marches that brought the Pacific coast city to a standstill in 1999 and plunged all attempts by WTO officials to construct a free trade agreement among more than 150 countries into disarray.
Developing world farmers and industrial workers in the US united against the move, which they saw as a neoliberal initiative in support of multinational corporations and an attack on their basic employment rights.
The WTO is under fire again, though this time from Donald Trump, whose return to the White House threatens to become an existential crisis for the global trade body.
Trump rejects the postwar mission to reduce barriers to free trade, including cuts to import tariffs, and argues they have mostly benefited China to the detriment of US businesses and workers.
Illustrating how much he believes a surcharge on imports will help US businesses, about three weeks before he secured a second term in the White House, Trump told an audience at the Economic Club of Chicago: “To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff. It’s my favourite word. It needs a public relations firm.”
According to many WTO watchers, a rescue mission for the Geneva-based organisation is impossible since Trump gained control of the president’s executive powers and a Republican majority was confirmed in the US Senate and House of Representatives.
Within hours of taking office on 20 January next year, he could impose protectionist measures in breach of WTO rules on a host of countries, including China, the UK and the EU.
Last month he announced that he would sign an executive order placing a 25% tariff on all imports from Canada and Mexico, and a 10% duty on China, on top of existing duties, blaming drugs and migrants crossing US borders.
Dolan, who in 1999 was deputy of the Ralph Nader-funded pressure group Global Trade Watch, is happy to embrace Trump as a fellow critic of the way the WTO has put the price of goods above other criteria, such as the protection of homegrown jobs and decent wages.
China’s dominance of trade based on huge subsidies for its industrial base, undercutting US and European jobs, is another issue where Dolan and Trump see eye to eye.
“It is difficult to reconcile our victory in 1999 with the WTO decision to grant most favoured nation (MFN) status to China. It was like letting the fox into the hen house,” he says.
Only two years after abandoning its 1999 meeting in Seattle, the WTO met and agreed to bring China into the mainstream trade system, giving it the same MFN status that was designed for the poorest developing world nations.
From one perspective, it ushered in an era of cheap produce that lowered inflation to the benefit of consumers in the rich west. From another, it undermined jobs and living standards in countries that relied on a strong manufacturing base.
The overwhelming vote in favour of opening the door to communist China was widely seen as an emotional response to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center a few months earlier to unite the world against Islamist terrorists. It is one that many US Republicans and Democrats have come to regret.
Seeking to usher in a new era of global trade, the WTO met in Doha a year later to restart the Seattle talks and liberate agriculture, among other things, from protectionist rules. But the warm feelings had evaporated and objections from India, Brazil and US farmers prevented the “Doha round” from ever making progress. Despite a series of make-or-break meetings in the intervening 22 years, little progress has been made.
Alan Winters, a trade expert at the University of Sussex, says Trump has been a longstanding critic of China’s preferential treatment and will sign the death knell of the WTO whether he imposes tariffs or breaks from the multilateral WTO system to sign one-to-one sweetheart deals with his favoured nations.
“It is clear that multilateralism is very sick. The Doha round hasn’t yet been killed off, but it is deadlocked,” he says.
“And when the solution to avoiding tariffs is bilateral deals that lie outside the WTO system, it doesn’t look like getting better for the WTO any time soon.”
Julian Hinz, a trade expert at Germany’s Kiel Institute, said: “WTO rules still govern a big chunk of world trade. But the shift to protectionism means there is a risk the WTO declines into irrelevance.”
The nearest the organisation has come to recognising how Beijing’s massive manufacturing subsidies breach the rules can be found in a statement earlier this year that said there was an “overall lack of transparency” in the Chinese government’s financial accounting.
WTO rules are grouped into three main areas: goods, services and intellectual property
Created in 1995, the WTO is the permanent incarnation of the general agreement on tariffs and trade (Gatt), a set of regulations governing multilateral trade relations that had evolved since the 1940s.
WTO rules are grouped into three main areas: goods, services and intellectual property. According to the principle of the “single undertaking”, WTO members must accept all multilateral rules, ensuring they operate on an equal footing, although there are many clauses allowing countries to go their own way, especially if it means lowering protectionist barriers.
One reason for the failure of the Doha round is the need for all – now 166 members – to achieve a consensus, giving the director general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a headache whenever agreements need to be hammered out.
The first woman and first African to hold the position, she was blocked by Trump in his first presidency from taking office before an approving nod from the incoming Biden administration allowed her to ease past rival candidates.
In the past four years she has struggled through the pandemic and the inflation crisis that followed the Russian invasion of Ukraine to keep developing world organisations onside.
Considered a dealmaker rather than a smooth diplomat based on her former job as Nigeria’s finance minister, her main attempt to make some progress was a deal to share the intellectual property behind vaccines used in the pandemic. This was high on the wishlist of many developing world countries and championed by South Africa but was scuppered by the EU and UK, which sought to protect the interests of domestic pharmaceutical companies.
Okonjo-Iweala must also cope with a decision made by President Trump in his first term to block the appointment of judges to WTO courts, preventing the resolution of trade disputes.
In response to the latest threat from Trump, WTO officials met last month to reappoint Okonjo-Iweala, unopposed, for a second term before Joe Biden leaves office.
“What for?” asks Dolan. “Why does she want to do the job. The organisation is nothing more than a thinktank these days.”
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/03/can-the-worlds-trade-police-survive-trump-ii
US President-elect Donald Trump has announced the appointment of General Keith Kellogg as Special Representative for Ukraine and Russia.
“I am very pleased to nominate General Keith Kellogg as Assistant to the President and Special Representative for Ukraine and Russia. Keith has had a distinguished military and business career, including serving in very important national security positions in my first administration,” Trump wrote on TruthSocial.
Previously, Kellogg served as National Security Advisor to Vice President Mike Pence, as well as Executive Secretary and Chief of Staff of the National Security Council in the first Trump administration. He served as National Security Advisor after Michael Flynn resigned.
According to The Wall Street Journal on November 6, Kellogg’s plan to end the war in Ukraine includes Ukraine’s refusal to join NATO for 20 years, freezing the front line and creating a demilitarized zone. It also provides for the transfer of the occupied Ukrainian territories to Russia.
Republican Mike Walz, Donald Trump’s future national security adviser, congratulated Keith Kellogg on his appointment as special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, confirming that Kellogg will seek a peace agreement.
“Keith has dedicated his life to protecting our great country and is committed to a peaceful resolution of the war in Ukraine,” he wrote on social media platform X.
In July 2024, in an interview with Voice of America, Keith Kellogg confirmed that Donald Trump had been given proposals to end the war in Ukraine, “an option that the president could use if elected.” In particular, according to him, such a plan involves encouraging Ukraine and Russia to start peace talks as soon as possible. It was said that the United States would continue to arm Ukraine to deter Russia from aggression during or after an agreement is reached. However, this will be done if Kyiv agrees to start negotiations.
According to the plan, to encourage Russia to negotiate, the United States and other NATO partners could postpone Ukraine’s membership in the alliance for an extended period in exchange for a “comprehensive, verifiable peace agreement with security guarantees.”
It is noted that in this version of a peaceful settlement, Ukraine may try to return its territories, but over a long period of time. It may be possible to complete this process only after Putin’s death, and through diplomatic means. It is also proposed to partially lift sanctions against Russia to encourage Moscow to take certain steps towards peace, and to establish a tax on imports of Russian energy resources for the restoration of Ukraine.
US President-elect Donald Trump is considering appointing former national intelligence chief Richard Grenell as special envoy on the Russia-Ukraine war, Reuters reports.
Grenell was reportedly the U.S. ambassador to Germany and acting director of National Intelligence during Trump’s first term (2017-2021).
He will play a key role in Trump’s efforts to end the war if he is eventually selected for the position.
Sources clarified that although there is currently no special envoy dedicated solely to resolving the Russia-Ukraine war, Trump is considering creating such a position.
At the same time, Trump may decide not to create a special envoy for the war in Ukraine. But if he does, he may choose someone else for the role. And there is no guarantee that Grenell will accept, Reuters reports.
If Grenell does agree, some of his positions may make Ukraine’s leaders think twice. For example, during a Bloomberg roundtable in July, he advocated the creation of “autonomous zones” as a means of resolving the conflict. He also suggested that he would not support Ukraine joining NATO in the near future, “a position he shares with many of Trump’s allies.”
Grenell’s supporters note that he has a long diplomatic career and a deep knowledge of European affairs. In addition to serving as ambassador to Germany, Grenell was also the president’s special envoy for peace talks in Serbia and Kosovo.
Reuters notes that Grenell, who campaigned for Trump ahead of the Nov. 5 election, was one of the top contenders for secretary of state. His nomination was eventually offered to Republican Senator Marco Rubio, which surprised and upset some of Grenell’s close allies.
Germany’s Angela Merkel recalls tricky dealings with world leaders from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin during her 16-year chancellorship in her frank memoirs, published as her legacy comes under intense scrutiny.
Here are some quotes from “Freedom: Memories 1954-2021” according to extracts released in Die Zeit weekly before next week’s official publication:
RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN
“Someone who was always on his guard to avoid being treated badly and always ready to dish it out, including power games with dogs and making others wait for him. You could find all this childish, reprehensible. You could shake your head at it. But it didn’t take Russia off the map.”
“He was not interested in building democratic structures or prosperity for a well-functioning economy in his country or elsewhere. Rather, he wanted to counter the fact that the United States had emerged victorious from the Cold War. He wanted Russia to remain an indispensable pole in a multipolar world after the end of the Cold War. To achieve this, he primarily drew on his experience in the security services.”
WRANGLING OVER UKRAINE AT NATO SUMMIT IN BUCHAREST, 2008:
“I thought it was an illusion to assume that the Membership Action Plan (MAP) status would have given Ukraine and Georgia protection from Putin’s aggression, that this status would have had a deterrent effect to the extent that Putin would have accepted the developments without doing anything.
“Would it have been conceivable that NATO member states would have responded militarily – with material as well as troops – and intervened? Would it have been conceivable that I, as Federal Chancellor, would have asked the German Bundestag for such a mandate for our Bundeswehr as well and would have received a majority in favour?”
“In another context, which I no longer remember in detail
he (Putin) later said to me: “You won’t be Chancellor forever. And then they’ll become a member of NATO. And I want to prevent that.” And I thought: You won’t be president forever either. Nevertheless, my worries about future tensions with Russia in Bucharest had not diminished.”
ON DONALD TRUMP
“He saw everything from the perspective of the property developer he was before entering politics. Each parcel of land could only be sold once, and if he didn’t get it someone else did. That’s how he saw the world.”
“For years, the many German cars on the streets of New York had been a thorn in his side. That Americans were buying them could, in his opinion, only be due to dumping prices and alleged exchange rate manipulation between the euro and the dollar.”
She wrote how Trump did not shake her hand for photographers at a White House meeting in 2017 even after she whispered to him that they should. “As soon as I said that, I shook my head inwardly at myself. How could I have forgotten that Trump knew exactly what effect he wanted to achieve.”
“He was obviously very fascinated by the Russian president. In the years that followed I had the impression that politicians with autocratic and dictatorial traits captivated him.
“We talked on two different levels. Trump on an emotional level, me on a factual one. For him, all countries were in competition with each other, in which the success of one was the failure of the other. He did not believe that co-operation could increase the prosperity of all.”
CHILDHOOD AND LIFE IN COMMUNIST EAST GERMANY:
“Life in the GDR was a constant life on the edge. Even if a day began in a carefree manner, everything could change in a matter of seconds if political boundaries were transgressed… the state knew no mercy. Finding out exactly where these boundaries lay was the real art of living. My somewhat conciliatory character and my pragmatic approach helped me.”
She described a sense of superiority “because, despite everything, this state did not manage to deprive me of something that made me live, feel and sense: a certain degree of carefreeness.”
US President-elect Donald Trump will appoint his top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, as deputy chief of staff for political affairs, the Associated Press reported on Monday.
“Trump has chosen … Stephen Miller to be deputy chief of staff for political affairs,” the publication writes.
US Vice President-elect J.D. Vance reacted to the news on social network X, congratulating Miller and calling him “a great choice for the president.”
Miller is a longtime Trump supporter. He served as a senior White House adviser during Trump’s first presidency. CNN notes that he has been a vocal advocate for stricter immigration policy. Miller is one of the main “architects” of Trump’s plans for the mass expulsion of illegal immigrants.
http://relocation.com.ua/tramp-obrav-sobi-zastupnyka-hlavy-administratsii/
The cryptocurrency forecasting platform Polymarket has launched a betting platform that will allow you to place bets on whether Donald Trump will be able to end the war in Ukraine in 90 days if he wins the 2024 US presidential election.
A “yes” bet requires two conditions to be met:
Donald Trump wins the US presidential election.
Ukraine and Russia declare a truce, ceasefire, or conclude an agreement to resolve the current conflict at any time from the time the Associated Press announces Trump’s victory until April 19, 2025 (23:59 EST).
At the time of publication, the probability of this scenario is 46%.
Polymarket is an open market prediction platform where users can place bets on the outcomes of various events, including political, economic, and social issues.
