WTO chief Okonjo-Iweala reinstated for second time period as commerce wars loom

By Emma Farge

GENEVA (Reuters) -World Commerce Group chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was reappointed for a second time period at a particular assembly on Friday, the commerce watchdog stated, which means her tenure will coincide with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration.

Analysts anticipate the street forward for the three-decade-old WTO will likely be difficult, doubtless characterised by commerce wars with Trump, who returns to the White Home on Jan. 20, threatening hefty tariffs on items from Mexico, Canada and China.

Okonjo-Iweala, a former Nigerian finance minister who made historical past in 2021 by turning into the WTO’s first feminine and first African director-general, introduced in September that she would run once more, aiming to finish “unfinished enterprise”.

No different candidates ran in opposition to her and the entire WTO’s 166 members agreed by consensus to a proposal to reappoint her.

“We’ve a full agenda to ship…and we totally intend to get to work instantly, no stopping, to try to ship on these outcomes,” Okonjo-Iweala informed journalists, citing WTO reforms and fishing negotiations as amongst her priorities.

Commerce sources stated the assembly created a method of fast-tracking her appointment course of to keep away from any threat of it being blocked by Trump, whose groups and allies have criticised each Okonjo-Iweala and the WTO up to now.

In 2020, his administration gave its help to a rival candidate and sought to dam her first time period. She secured U.S. backing solely when President Joe Biden succeeded Trump within the White Home in January 2021.

WTO Basic Council Chair and Norwegian Ambassador Petter Ølberg stated the method had been honest and clear. “We really feel that we now are actually match for the subsequent 4 years,” he stated.

MOUNTING U.S.-CHINA TENSIONS

Even within the Biden period, WTO negotiations have made restricted progress though a handful of offers have been struck in Geneva in 2022. Efforts to revamp the WTO’s dispute settlement system, dropped at its knees below Trump resulting from U.S. opposition to guage appointments, have to this point didn’t ship forward of an end-December deadline.

Many predict the WTO will likely be a theatre the place mounting commerce tensions between the U.S. and China will play out, with Trump’s new commerce group anticipated to problem Beijing’s official creating nation standing on the WTO that critics say endows it with unfair benefits.

China’s mission despatched a message on X congratulating Okonjo-Iweala and saying it was trying ahead to working together with her and different members “to safeguard the multilateral buying and selling system”.

Okonjo-Iweala stated she was trying ahead to working with the incoming Trump administration and that she noticed widespread floor between them on areas like mental property rights. “I feel we should always come into issues with a really constructive and inventive strategy to attempting to cope with the problems that may face the world buying and selling system,” she stated.

She declined to touch upon Trump’s tariff plans, calling it untimely.

Requested to reply to remarks by Trump’s former U.S. commerce consultant Robert Lighthizer that she was “China’s ally in Geneva”, she stated: “The WTO has 166 members and I hope all of them imagine I am their ally.”