WT … Oh no!

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

Business, News

4.6 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2023

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today we’re talking about a key player in international trade: the World Trade Organization.

The WTO is responsible for setting and enforcing the rules of global trade between 164 member countries. While the United States once supported the idea of a rules-based system, lately the country hasn’t been a big fan of the rules.

Among other things, the Trump administration’s decision to impose steel and aluminum taxes in violation of WTO policies sent the organization’s ability to govern into freefall. What would it take for the WTO to get back on its feet?

“It’s clear that we need new trade rules on things like digital trade, e-commerce, and privacy data. There’s a whole series of areas that are completely unregulated by the WTO, and we need rules. It needs to get back to becoming that forum in which you can negotiate rules,” said Jennifer Hillman, Georgetown law professor and former member of the WTO appellate body.

On the show today: the ins and outs of the WTO, why the organization isn’t running like it’s supposed to, and what that could mean for the future of global trade.

In the News Fix: Despite the ongoing trade war, imports and exports between the United States and China are higher than ever. We’ll discuss how this fits into the shifting landscape of globalization. Plus, we’ll look at the effects a 20-year-long drought is having in one community outside of Scottsdale, Arizona.

Later, climate scientist and author Kimberly Nicholas shares what she got wrong about a popular climate a statistic.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

- “What’s Next for the WTO?” from the Council on Foreign Relations

- “Australia and China team up to protest WTO blockages caused by US vetoes on appeal body” from The Guardian

- “Trump, China, and Steel Tariffs: The Day the WTO Died” from the Council on Foreign Relations

- “WTO says Trump’s steel tariffs violated global trade rules” from Politico

- “US-China Trade is Close to a Record, Defying Talk of Decoupling” from Bloomberg

- “Davos summit is starting. What’s on the agenda?” from Marketplace

- “Skipped Showers, Paper Plates: An Arizona Suburb’s Water Is Cut Off” from The New York Times

It’s a new year, and we’re looking for new answers to the Make Me Smart question. Leave us a voice message at 508-U-B-SMART and your submission may be featured in a future episode.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm sleeping at my vest. It's cold today in Los Angeles.
0:04.8	Shilly chite. Hey everybody, I'm Kyle Rizdal. Welcome back to Make Me Smart.
0:07.8	We're none of us, as smart as all of us as we like to say.
0:11.6	And I'm Amy Scott in For Kimberly Adams. Thanks for joining us.
0:15.4	It's Tuesday, which means it's time to dive deep into a single topic.
0:20.6	And today we're all going to get smarter together about something I know very little about.
0:24.4	So I'm excited to learn about the WTO, the World Trade Organization.
0:29.1	So what happened was that and it happens not infrequently on this podcast is the Kimberly and I were talking about something.
0:34.8	And then one of us said, Hey, we should do a thing on that.
0:37.2	And and our crack producing staff being the crack producing staff that they are recognized that for what it was,
0:43.0	which was, hey, let's do a thing on the BTO. So we're going to we're going to literally get smart today on the World Trade
0:48.9	Organization. What it is, why it matters, what some of the challenges with it are right now. Let's be honest.
0:55.0	And and it's role in global trade. Yeah, and we've got the right person here to help us do this.
1:01.5	Jennifer Hillman, she is a Georgetown law professor and former member of the WTO appellate body, which we will ask about.
1:09.8	Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's an honor to be here.
1:14.3	All right. So let's start with just the basic definition and background.
1:18.3	What is the WTO? Why does it exist?
1:21.8	So the WTO is an international organization. That means it's made up of in this instance, 164 countries that belong to it.
1:30.2	It's basic job is to do a couple of things. One, it's supposed to be a forum where everybody can get together to negotiate rules on international trade.
1:39.6	It's also a place where you're supposed to bring your disputes to settle them. If you have them, it also serves as a bit of a clearinghouse on all kinds of records and and
1:50.1	measures about trade. So if you want to look up what is the tariff schedule of Indonesia or if you want to look up what this what was commitments were made in another country, you can go to the WTO and find out all of that.
2:02.8	And and it's also there to provide technical assistance and support to developing countries and least developed countries to make sure they understand what their trading rights are, what their obligations are, and how to make trade flow better in developing countries.
	...

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