In September 2003, the US government sent a request for personnel to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva: "We are pleased to be able to present two competent candidates for the" extremely important work "of the highest WTO court, wrote Trade Commissioner Robert Zoellick. One of these candidates was Robert Lighthizer. The lawyer was considered highly talented, assertive, and he brought plenty of expertise. But the WTO committees decided against him.
16 years later, the moment has come for Lighthizer to retaliate for the abduction. Today it is he who, as US Trade Representative, is responsible for the WTO nominations.
The now 71-year-old is no longer interested in the committee's constructive support. Instead, he counts on the total blockade of the body that has the last word in international trade disputes. On Tuesday at 23:59 clock divorced two of the three remaining judges from office. The WTO is thus effectively paralyzed. Although its 164 members can continue to make representations in Geneva if they want to defend themselves against protectionist practices. But there is no one left to decide the cases.
The transatlantic conflict over Airbus subsidies also falls into this black hole: if the EU appeals against the recent WTO ruling that allows the US to impose punitive tariffs, the petition would end up in a quasi-dead letterbox. It threatens a return to "the laws of the jungle," complains WTO Director-General Robert Azevedo.
Urgent need for reform
The fact that the largest contributor to the US is not satisfied with the work of the WTO is not new. Even Donald Trump's predecessors Barack Obama and George W. Bush demanded fundamental reforms - in vain. The WTO has "three fundamental problems," says Thomas Duesterberg of the conservative Hudson Institute.
- You do not work efficiently. The dispute over Airbus aid dragged on for over 15 years. On average, a complaint to the WTO hangs in Geneva for three and a half years.
- The 24-year-old trade agreement does not cover important areas such as online trade or cross-border data traffic at all. Because a new treaty requires unanimity, any attempt to modernize the rules or liberalize markets in the member states has failed.
- The powerful appeals body notoriously transgressed its mandate and adopted a legislative competence that was never intended for it.
Lighthizer, a lawyer earning a fortune in protecting the American steel industry from foreign competition with anti-dumping lawsuits, shares this criticism. Unlike his boss in the White House, he is not a notorious free trade opponent - as long as the rules of the United States is played. "If we did not have the WTO, we would have to invent it," the shrewd negotiator told US Congressional delegates, "because it offers the US many opportunities to advance our trade interests."
Feeling loss of sovereignty
From the point of view of the Americans, the WTO was founded above all to force the other countries to dismantle trade barriers. Europe had promised to open its markets for hormone meat from the US, recently complained Stephen Vaughn, until recently, Lighthizers chief justice. Meanwhile, "it's clear they will not do that."
Instead, Americans have to find that the system they've created turns against them. The US has become the most frequently attacked WTO member, Lighthizer complains. "In other words, the WTO treats one of the freest and most open economies in the world as the world's biggest thug." Many trading partners believed they could enforce concessions from the US "through an action in Geneva that they would never get at the negotiating table." The Trump administration wants to resist this feeling of loss of sovereignty.
Basically, Lighthizer's attack is not directed against Geneva, but against Beijing. In his view, the WTO has become a Trojan horse of the Chinese. Instead of stopping their subsidies, the WTO prevented America from defending itself. It is "absurd" that some of the richest countries in the world - including China - have declared themselves developing countries to benefit from special rules, criticizes Lighthizer.
Join it or beat it
The US would never have agreed to China's accession if they had known at the time that the country could overtake it economically, believes Gabriel Felbermayr, President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW). "The duel between the US and China destroys the WTO," he warns: "This organization is not made for geostrategic rivals."
Lighthizer, who has hung up a life-size portrait of himself at home, is determined to defend America's economic domination of Asian competition. The trade war serves this goal as well as the starvation of the WTO. There are two options, Lighthizer said in his 2003 application for the WTO judge post: "Do you want to criticize the system and hope to destroy it - or are you going to Geneva and applying a strict constructivist perspective?"
Trump's strong man has now apparently opted for the first option.
