Some European Union leaders discussed a rethinking of the World Trade Organization, the entity at the center of the global trading system, at the European Council meeting on Thursday night in Brussels.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/42582212

“If the WTO continues to be incapable of working,” German Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz said, the EU has “to come up with something else.”

  • Ragnor
    2·
    4 days ago

    The article is really missing some info about what it is that isn’t working.

    Is it veto rights, if that applies?

    Is it protectionism like what Trump is doing with the tariffs that should be against the rules, and open markets should be enforced?

    I don’t know enough about how the WTO operates.

    • ViatorOmnium@piefed.socialEnglish
      3·
      4 days ago

      I am not an expert, but what I remember from the news with a little refresher from wikipedia, the main issue is that dispute settlement mechanism is broken for two reasons:

      • National security concerns were allowed as an opaque excuse to break the rules
      • Trump and Biden blocked appointments to the bodies that are responsible for enforcing the rules, so there’s no one even trying to enforce the rules inside of the WTO for 6 years now. The EU and some other members have an ad-hoc mechanism to settle disputes, but it’s not recognized by the US.

      But the underlying problem is that US wants rules that apply to others but not them, and nothing short of the Yellowstone finally going off will change it in the short term.