WTO Top Job: US, EU Split Over Okonjo-Iweala & Yoo Myung-hee, As China, Brazil & India’s Stance Unclear

The World Trade Organization is set to name the new Director-General next month that will replace Brazilian Roberto Azevedo, who stepped down from the job at the end of August, a year before his term was billed to end.

Meanwhile, the United States of America and the European Union appear to have been polarized over their preferred candidate for the top job at the World Trade Organization, according to Bloomberg report

It was reported that the European Union is inclined to support Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and may sign off on that position by early next week, people familiar with the process had said. Other observers say the Trump administration is leaning toward South Korea’s Yoo Myung-hee. Meanwhile, China’s preference and those of other major economies like Brazil and India remain unclear.

However, indications are that the US elections coming up in two weeks time may reshape the position of the country, in which President Donald Trump had earlier submitted that WTO is a tool for globalists who allowed China’s economic rise to go unchecked. Thus, if he wins, his aides had indicated that he would continue to reshape WTO for resolution of trade disputes.

Rufus Yerxa, who served as deputy director-general of the WTO from 2002 to 2013 and now heads the National Foreign Trade Council, a Washington-based business group representing U.S. companies said:

“We shouldn’t dismiss the possibility that this could end in a deadlock and that an outcome will have to wait for the U.S. election and what the next administration decides to do”.

While few countries are publicly declaring their support for their preferred candidate between the two women, the process requires a consensus of the WTO’s 164 members, meaning a single nation could block either Yoo or Okonjo-Iweala. Muddling the picture even further are trading alliances from Africa to Asia strained by three years of tariff wars and protectionist sentiment only heightened by the Covid-19 pandemic.

It was reported that Yoo has struggled, for instance, to secure support from Japan, both a trading partner and rival of South Korea. Deteriorating trade relations between the two export powerhouses weighed on Yoo’s campaign initially and remain an important consideration in the last phase of the race.

In an interview on Friday, Yoo acknowledged that she might have an uphill battle. “Everybody loves an underdog story,” she said. “I believe I have earned members’ trust through my hard work, sweat and perseverance and sincerity. I will continue to do that.”

Meanwhile, it was reported that the two candidates have been working behind the scene to rally around some countries for supports noting that one of the bargaining tools is jobs for their citizens as one of four WTO Deputies Director-General.

Okonjo-Iweala last week called for a return to “a multilateral system. Let’s strengthen that — that is what will serve the world and let’s do less of the bilateral spats that we see,” she said in a virtual panel discussion on Thursday.

Okonjo-Iweala has strong support from groups including the 55-member African Union, the Economic Community of West African States and the Organization of African, Caribbean and Pacific States. Thus, if those endorsements hold, Okonjo-Iweala will have secured votes from most of the African continent.

However, it was reported that Okonjo-Iweala is viewed by people familiar with Lighthizer’s thinking as being too close to pro-trade internationalists in Washington like Robert Zoellick, the former USTR and World Bank president. Okonjo-Iweala, who served as a senior executive under Zoellick at the World Bank from 2007 to 2011, was a candidate to replace him when he stepped down in 2012.

It was also reported that Lighthizer is a longtime WTO skeptic, and people close to him say he would prefer to see a more technocratic candidate like Yoo, South Korea’s trade minister and a 25-year veteran who has helped expand her country’s commercial network through bilateral accords with China, the EU, the U.K. and the U.S. He knows the Korean from having worked with her on the renegotiation of a trade agreement early in the Trump administration.