GENEVA—In an ornate stone palace on the shores of Lake Geneva, just a stone’s throw from the Quai Wilson and the Palais des Nations, the Trump administration is waging its latest battle against the international order that the United States helped to build. At issue is the fate of a little-known part of a little-understood institution: the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization. As soon as Wednesday, if U.S. President Donald Trump continues his administration’s yearslong campaign of obstruction, the WTO’s ability to resolve trade disputes between countries—pretty much its most important function—will likely be paralyzed. That means that the go-it-alone unilateralism that has characterized the Trump administration’s approach to trade could soon spread far and wide, essentially turning back the clock to a time when trade rivalries between nations were settled not with legal arguments but with tariff walls, trade barriers, and beggar-thy-neighbor protectionism. “When you listen to the rhetoric from the Trump administration, they argue that the United States is better off in a power-based, law of the jungle system,” said Jennifer Hillman, the senior fellow for trade at the Council on Foreign Relations. “I think the last three years have shown how wrong that is.”
The specific battle between the United States and the other members of the WTO centers on the seven judges of the Appellate Body, who ultimately decide appeals on trade complaints between nations. At least three judges are needed to hear an appeal. But with the Trump administration systematically blocking the naming of any new judges since it took office, no new justices have replaced those whose terms expired. On Wednesday, barring an unlikely eleventh-hour breakthrough, two of the last three judges will leave, and the Appellate Body will be down to one. Soon after, the wheels of trade justice will grind to a halt, with essentially no way to ultimately resolve big trade disputes like the yearslong battle between Airbus and Boeing.
“We’re getting to a point where we could soon prove a counterfactual,” said Keith Rockwell, the director of external relations at the World Trade Organization. “We have the WTO essentially because of economic nationalism, and the lessons of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, and all those destructive policies.”
What would happen if the WTO didn’t exist?
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