The Misery of the WTO. For a Reinvention of World Trade.
The multilateral trading system is in its deepest crisis in decades. After many years of haltingly negotiations, it seems to have become almost irrelevant whether the end of the Doha Round of the WTO will one day be officially announced, or negotiations remain extended without results. The crisis of the WTO has two causes: a lack of trust and an ideological prejudice. A lack of trust exists because the countries of the North judge trade with two standards, free trade for the South and protectionism for their own economies. In this article, Tilman Santarius points out five shortcomings of world trade policy, giving rise to five milestones for the reinvention of a multilateral trading system.