Position of Joe Biden's Administration towards the World Trade Organization

Abstract

The election of Democratic Party candidate J. Biden to the post of the President of the United States did not lead to noticeable progress in relation to changing the vector of the generally negative attitude of official Washington in assessing the activities of the World Trade Organization. The historically established consensus of the Republican and Democratic parties, expressed in the general similarity of the approach of both the legislative and executive branches of government in the United States to the WTO as an instrument primarily for the realization of the national interests of the United States in the foreign economic sphere, hinders the achievement of generally acceptable agreements within this Organization in key areas of its activities. Like the previous administration of D. Trump, the administration of J. Biden has been blocking, in particular, for a number of years the activities of the WTO Appellate Body. Despite the Democratic President's statements about the US commitment to the principles of liberal trade, the White House, as before, proceeds from the desire to maintain the leading role of the United States in the WTO, even at the cost of curtailing certain areas of its work. The dominant drive is to transform the WTO into an international economic mechanism to strategically contain China, openly oppose Russia by politicizing the Organization and taking steps that pave the way for the complete dismantling of the rules-based multilateral trading system. The WTO is actually in a state of permanent institutional crisis in a number of central areas of its activity. The only way to deal with the current crisis is the prerogative of economics, not politics, the need to prevent the violation of agreed multilateral trade rules by unilateral actions, which otherwise will continue to have a negative impact on world markets and the economies of many WTO members.