Finally, some good news at the WTO

The draft text of the reform plan explained Molina’s methods with an analogy: Two people want to buy the last pumpkin in a market. Under the traditional way of negotiating, they would argue over who had the right to take it home, a process that could last until the pumpkin rotted into mush. But interest-based talks begin by asking what each party wants the pumpkin for. If one wants the seeds to eat and the other wants the shell to make a jack-o’-lantern, they can share the pumpkin and both get what they need.

This hopeful new way of doing business is the silver lining of the crisis that Donald Trump created five years ago when he refused to appoint new adjudicators to the WTO’s appellate body. American officials had long complained that the appellate body, which functions like an appeals court for trade disputes, was writing new rules for global trade instead of just enforcing the rules that members had already agreed to. The Obama administration blocked the reappointment of one adjudicator for that reason. Then the Trump administration refused to appoint anybody at all. With no new appointments, that part of the WTO died. Today, any country that doesn’t like a WTO ruling can simply appeal it – to nobody. Thirtyone cases wait in that void for a decision that might never come.

At first, members weren’t sure if they could trust the Americans or the strange new process that Molina introduced. But he worked hard to gain their trust. He held more than 350 meetings with over 145 members from every region of the world.

Members soon realized that informal mediation could help resolve trade disputes more quickly and amicably than litigation. They established rules for mediation so that more countries could take that route. They also recognized that some countries will always opt for the formal legal process, so they streamlined that.

Manuel Tovar Rivera, the minister of foreign trade for Costa Rica, a country that has had a case it won appealed into the void, told me that Molina’s new process “has been the driver to rebuild trust among members and to start believing again.”

That’s the good news. Now for the awful news: Molina was abruptly removed from his post as Guatemala’s deputy permanent representative to the WTO by that country’s new government, for reasons that it has not explained.

It’s a setback for the entire world. At the meeting this week in Abu Dhabi, Molina’s colleagues expressed shock and fear that they won’t be able to complete the reform package without him by their selfimposed deadline of the end of the year.

It’s a reminder of how fragile consensus-building can be. But something crucial was accomplished that cannot be taken away: diplomats from around the world did something different, together, and saw that it worked. Now, hopefully, at the next international meeting, there will be dozens of people like Molina, helping to light a new path toward a shared future that none of us could have imagined before.