Showing 1 - 10 of 11
WTO at 30 after decades of challenges
Oped, Supachai Panitchpakdi, Published on 30/07/2025
» When I sat down to write an article "WTO at 10" for a commemorative book for the occasion in 2005, little did I know of the huge challenges the WTO and the multilateral trading system would have to confront in the following two decades.
Key to unlocking trade benefits
Oped, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala & Makhtar Diop, Published on 29/10/2024
» Supply chains form the backbone of international commerce, representing over half the value of global merchandise trade. They also create large numbers of jobs and lower the bar for countries and companies to participate in the world economy. But the finance underpinning supply chains is inadequate, leaving too many small businesses in emerging and developing economies cut off from the benefits of global trade.
Moving towards a fifth world order
Oped, Gordon Brown & Mohamed A El-Erian, Published on 26/10/2024
» The Bretton Woods institutions -- the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank -- are now 80 years old. But they are as under-resourced and poorly supported by national governments as at any time in their history. Their predicament is perhaps the clearest sign that economic and financial multilateralism is fragmenting along with the global economy. Worse, this fragmentation comes at a time of rising international tensions, financial fragility, sputtering growth, rising poverty, and mounting reconstruction bills in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine, and elsewhere.
A free and fair industrial strategy
Oped, Mia Amor Mottley and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Published on 14/04/2023
» A multitude of crises has placed the world on a path towards a profoundly unjust economic future. If we are going to protect the global commons and create a better existence for future generations, we need moral leadership coupled with just strategies that help the most vulnerable.
Confronting the global water crisis head-on
Oped, Mariana Mazzucato, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Johan Rockström & Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Published on 23/03/2023
» The world's water crisis can no longer be ignored. Unless we manage water properly, we will neither tackle climate change nor meet most of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Let the WTO referee carbon border taxes
Oped, Jeffrey Frankel, Published on 08/12/2022
» Perhaps the most important task confronting the international order is the enforcement of national limits on greenhouse-gas emissions, such as those that were negotiated in the 2015 Paris agreement. Carbon border adjustments could give these limits teeth, but fair application requires a revived World Trade Organization.
Fixing insecurity in the food trade
Oped, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Published on 25/10/2022
» Between rising hunger and the prospect of still more supply shortages, dark clouds are hovering over the global food system. Not only has the war in Ukraine limited access to, and raised prices for, food, and fertiliser, but extreme weather events are disrupting production, and economic downturns have diminished people's ability to afford adequate and nutritious diets. Climate change is fuelling droughts and exacerbating water scarcity, adding to the list of threats facing agricultural production.
Reform the economics and governance of water
Oped, Mariana Mazzucato, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Johan Rockström and Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Published on 30/09/2022
» The floods, droughts, heatwaves, and fires that are devastating many parts of the world underscore two fundamental facts. First, damage to freshwater supplies is increasingly straining human societies, especially the poor, with far-reaching implications for economic, social, and political stability. Second, the combined impact of today's extreme conditions is unprecedented in human history and is overwhelming policymakers' ability to respond.
World in crisis needs trade, aid
Oped, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Rebeca Grynspan and Pamela Coke-Hamilton, Published on 28/07/2022
» We are in the toughest period the world economy has faced since the creation of the multilateral system more than three-quarters of a century ago. A quadruple shock of Covid, climate change, conflict and cost-of-living has undone years of hard-fought development gains. As financial conditions tighten, even countries that had seemed on track to prosperity and stability now stare into the abyss of debt distress, fragility and uncertainty about the future.
Food supplies take Ukraine war hit
Oped, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Published on 30/03/2022
» The war in Ukraine is causing immense, heart-wrenching human suffering. At the World Trade Organization (WTO), an institution based on the rule of law and established to help forge peace, we find the violence abhorrent to our fundamental principles. We echo UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres's call for the bloodshed to stop, and we wish for a prompt and peaceful resolution of the conflict.