The selection of the World Trade Organisation’s next director-general has entered its final phase, with two candidates left in the running: Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former Nigerian finance and economy minister and a former managing director of the World Bank, and Yoo Myung-hee, South Korea’s trade minister. In view of the WTO’s current challenges, Okonjo-Iweala is the better choice.
The WTO faces two major crises: an institutional crisis caused by the great-power rivalry between the United States and China, and a crisis of globalisation—of which the WTO, as the overseer of global trade rules, is a major symbol.
Sino-American trade tensions have paralysed the organisation, with the US blocking the appointment of new judges to its appellate body, which rules on trade disputes among member countries. Moreover, the Covid-19 crisis, another source of great-power tension, has prompted many firms to consider reshoring production in order to reduce their reliance on pandemic-hit Chinese suppliers, thus disrupting the global supply chains that are critical to world trade.
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