Commentary: Talk of abandoning WTO follows a pattern

It’s time to take President Donald Trump’s and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer’s threats to leave the World Trade Organization seriously.    The World Trade Organization (WTO) is holding its biggest meeting in two years in Buenos Aires, Argentina this week.
   The significance of this meeting of 164 trade representatives and ministers from around the globe cannot be understated given the anti-trade sentiments permeating the highest reaches of government in the United States.
   Both the Financial Times and New York Times this week ran think-pieces examining U.S. support for the very idea of the WTO, a body that has been critiqued heavily by President Donald Trump and his trade cipher, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.
   The end of the New York Times piece contained this particularly pertinent quote from National Foreign Trade Council President (and former WTO Deputy Director) General Rufus Xerxa: “Every country in the world hates the WTO, they just hate all the other alternatives worse.”
   It brought to mind Winston Churchill’s famous quote about democracy: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms.”
   Both Trump and Lighthizer evidently believe there are fundamental flaws with the WTO, both in design and execution. The design flaws, they seem to suggest, allow large and powerful economies that are still in a developing state (re: China) to play by a different set of rules than large and powerful developed economies. That creates an inherent imbalance that has adversely affected U.S. industries.
   This line of thinking dovetails perfectly with Trump’s campaign message that the United States has been taken advantage of in all of its trade dealings.
   The execution flaws, meanwhile, stem from the WTO’s inability to properly protect the U.S. through the organization’s dispute resolution mechanisms.
   Both Trump and Lighthizer also seem to be of the mind that the United States would benefit from withdrawing from the WTO.
   Here is the fallacy in this thinking:
     • Trade has overwhelmingly helped the U.S., but not in an even way, and certain populations have been negatively impacted by trade enabled by the WTO;
     • The U.S. has been effective at resolving trade disputes through the WTO, in fact much more effective and frequently than other members;
     • And withdrawing from the WTO would not have the desired effect for the U.S., as other members would simply proceed with using it. In other words, the absence of the United States would not sink the body.
   Looking more broadly, there’s something else that’s interesting to note about the tenor of U.S. discussion on the merits of trade: the focus has inexorably shifted from human rights conditions in developing nations to employment rights in developed nations.
   In other words, the opponents of the very idea of trade are ideologically different now than they were in the past. No one in the Trump administration is arguing that trade from developing economy to developed economy is unfair because it allows people in those developing economies to exploited. In fact, the very opposite is true. Trump and Lighthizer are essentially suggesting that the U.S. is being exploited.
   That is a fundamental shift in how we view trade, and a fight that the WTO at large has been unprepared to fight.
   The WTO is precisely the place to enact change, even if that change is excruciatingly slow and painful.
   But Trump’s attitude toward the WTO fits neatly in line with his attitude toward all established institutions at home and abroad. This list goes on and on, but notably includes: NATO, NAFTA, and diplomatic staffing at the U.S. State Department.
   Trump has no well-worn trust in any of those institutions, and nor does he apparently with the WTO. And in Lighthizer, he has found a kindred spirit when it comes to trade, a battled-hardened trade expert who has distrusted the global pillars of trade long before Trump even considered running for office.
   As with the abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and with a potential withdrawal from NAFTA, it’s clear nothing is sacred, and U.S. interests should take threats to walk away from the WTO credibly. The world will move on either way.