WTO head to step down early
GENEVA (AP): THE HEAD of the World Trade Organization (WTO) said Thursday that he will leave his post a year early, a “personal decision” that sets the stage for a succession contest at the trade body amid lingering US-China tensions and a coronavirus pandemic that has doused the global economy.
Roberto Azevedo, a 62-yearold Brazilian, said he will step down August 31 as WTO director general, ending a seven-year tenure marked in recent years by intense pressure from President Donald Trump, who repeatedly accused the Geneva-based trade body of “unfair” treatment of the United States and launched a trade war with China in defiance of the WTO system.
“This is a decision that I do not take lightly, ”Azevedo told a special meeting of WTO delegations. “It is a personal decision – a family decision – and I am convinced that this decision serves the best interests of this organisation.”
The 25-year-old trade body has never had to fill a vacancy for the director general post before that term expired, and under WTO rules, a selection process for a successor is to begin as soon as possible.
Azevedo’s WTO often found itself in the firing line of the Trump administration, which has accused it of letting China get away with unfair state subsidies and for allegedly strong-arming foreign businesses into giving up their intellectual property in order to gain access to the giant Chinese market.
Speaking to reporters Thursday at the White House before travelling to Pennsylvania, Trump said he was “okay with it” when asked about Azevedo’s plans to step down.
“The World Trade Organization is horrible,” Trump said. “We’ve been treated very badly. I’ve been saying it for a long time. They treat China as a developing nation, therefore China gets a lot of the benefits that the US doesn’t get.”