The WTO crisis marks the questioning of regulated globalization

To analyse. Globalization is dead, place for wild globalization? For a big decade, the period of triumphant globalization, opened with the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 and the accession of China in December 2001, is over. Trading blocs have fractured, the WTO has been deeply weakened, “economic sovereignty” has become a key objective.

However, it is enough to take a look at the Christmas gifts piled up under the tree to know that globalization is far from over. An electronic gadget? Sports equipment? A garment ? Probably made somewhere in Asia.

Admittedly, the dynamic of globalization is broken. The share of international trade in world gross domestic product fell from 31% in 1975 to 43% in 1995, and reached 61% in 2008. Since then, it has fallen slightly, to 57% in 2021. A level far higher , however, to everything the planet has known before.

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On the other hand, the rules that surrounded these international exchanges for almost three decades are being completely destroyed. At the risk of a switch to a jungle, in which only the strongest would prevail. In this game, Europe is not necessarily the best placed.

The great game of globalization no longer has a referee

For more than three years now, the WTO has been largely emptied of its substance with the paralysis of its Appellate Body, a sort of “supreme court” ruling as a last resort. It is made up of seven members, whose four-year mandate is renewable once. Their appointment, according to a rolling calendar system, requires the unanimity of WTO member countries.

The administration of Barack Obama (2008-2016) began to attack the appointment of certain members of the Appellate Body, but the fatal blow was dealt by Donald Trump, who decided to block any new appointments entirely. Gradually, the mandates of the seven judges came to an end, the last in November 2020. Today, all the positions are vacant. Since coming to power in 2020, Joe Biden has refused to unblock the situation.

In these circumstances, countries can file a complaint with the WTO if they believe that a practice is anti-competitive, they can be heard in the first instance, but the cases will end up buried at the level of the Appellate Body. Clearly, the great game of globalization no longer has a referee.

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At the same time, US commercial attacks on China have gone crescendo. Donald Trump had targeted certain Chinese companies, in particular Huawei. Behind softer rhetoric, Mr. Biden went much further. On October 7, 2022, it announced a ban on the export of advanced-type semiconductors to China. This embargo applies not only to American companies, but also to all foreign companies which themselves use American technologies in the production of their semiconductors. ” That is to say just about everyone”underlined in a recent Sebastian Mallaby podcast, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an American think tank. The attack is no longer limited to one or two companies deemed to be threatening, but targets “the entire Chinese economy, civilian and military”he continues.

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