Okonjo-Iweala To Seek Another Term Leading WTO

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has confirmed to Reuters that she will seek a second four-year term at the head of the group. Her current term expires on 31 August 2025. She says that her priorities for a second mandate include completing a fisheries deal, WTO reforms, agriculture and decarbonising trade.'

• According to the DG, 'geopolitical tensions' will be one of the major challenges over the coming four years (as they have been for the past four years).
• Asked whether the WTO can be successful if Donald Trump is elected US president in November, Okonjo-Iweala says that 'I don't focus on that because I have no control'.
• Amid increasing geostrategic competition and the siloing of economies into broad US-aligned or China-aligned blocs, the WTO has found it increasingly difficult in recent years to perform its roles as a dispute resolution body and as an advocate for global trade and multilateralism.
• The FT reports the role of 'third nations' such as 'Australia, Chile, the UK, South Korea, Malaysia, perhaps Turkey, perhaps Vietnam.' FT: "The idea here is not so much that these countries all gather together behind a giant battering ram to unblock the WTO by pushing the US and China out of the way [...]. It’s that they keep as much of the multilateral system — dispute settlement, plurilateral and sectoral agreements — going as possible and in general co-operate as much as they can."