Question

Briefly summarize the current U.S. attitude towards the WTO. To what extent is this attitude unique to the Trump administration?

At least 200 words, thank you.

Answer 1

Donald Trump has threatened to kick the United States out of the World Trade Organization if it is not "making up" and treating the United States differently. The President of the United States issued the warning against the international trade agency. Trump's administration requested WTO help over retaliatory tariffs from China, the European Union, Canada, Mexico, and Turkey, claiming that the laws of the international body made the action unconstitutional.

The United States does not appear willing to avert a crisis until other countries accept that the WTO negotiation platform and part trade policeman has failed in several respects.

The current crisis at the WTO reveals deeper cracks. The consensus-based body, which includes 164 countries with vastly divergent economic development levels, has, since it was established in 1995, largely struggled to create new rules for freer commerce. Negotiations begun in Doha in 2001, after producing few results, were officially declared dead by the US in 2015.

Among America's biggest concerns is how panel leaders have come up with their own rules in the absence of specific guidelines from the several agreements concluded when the WTO was formed in 1995.