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Today’s
title may be a strange proposition, but hear me out. The World Trade
Organization (WTO) was a long time coming. Initially proposed as the
International Trade Organization (ITO) at the Bretton Woods Conference
in 1944, the ITO was to be the third leg of stool on which a rules-based
international economic system would sit, along with the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund. The latter two got off the ground, but
the ITO never made it, largely because the U.S. Senate failed to ratify
the Treaty of Havana that would have launched it. Nearly 50 years later,
the WTO was
founded by consensus as part of the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade
negotiations.
The
words “by consensus” reveal where this column is going, and, fair
warning, the beginning of a rant. The most important procedural feature
of the WTO is the determination to act by consensus. That does not mean
unanimity. Not everyone is required to explicitly vote “yes” on a
matter, but members must approve or stay silent if consensus is to be
reached. The WTO has procedures that permit voting, but they have not
been employed. Achieving consensus has always been the operational goal.
The
result has been few accomplishments over its 28-year life span. It has
produced one major multilateral agreement—the Trade Facilitation
Agreement in 2015—and two weeks ago it managed to produce vaccine waiver
and fisheries agreements that were far short of their original
ambition. Other accomplishments have been plurilateral agreements which
have not involved every WTO member.
Trade
agreement negotiations have tended to follow a predictable pattern:
little progress is made until the last day or two when ministers face a
deadline and “hostage-taking” becomes the norm. Members threaten to
block progress unless they get what they want, and since any single
country can bring down the entire agreement, those threats are credible.
Occasionally, the problem children concede a point or two, but if there
is a positive result, it is usually well short of what the proponents
wanted.
Turning
to the United States, one sees similar problems. In Congress, even
before the party divisions became as narrow as they are now, both houses
were moving away from deciding matters by voting and instead were
moving them to the back room to be “worked out” by interested members
and their staffs. The result is an informal process where a single
legislator can hold up progress on important matters until their
particular interests are satisfied. One need look no farther than the
current efforts to pass privacy legislation or to resolve the
outstanding issues in the China legislation
now pending in conference. In both cases, well-positioned
representatives or senators have put the brakes on long-overdue actions.
In
my view, this is the antithesis of democracy. Rather than resolve
issues by voting, which is what the founding fathers intended, we have
devolved into seeking consensus. When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says
she doesn’t go to the floor to lose, the result is that important things
sometimes have to wait. She is missing the point—operating by de
factoconsensus is not democracy. It is handing over decisionmaking
authority to the biggest obstructionists. Better in my view to go to the
floor, win or lose, and move on. One of the reasons Congress’ public
opinion rating is persistently
lower than the president’s is that people perceive them as not being
able to accomplish anything. Actually voting, with the opportunity to
offer real amendments, will either produce results or identify more
clearly who is responsible for the failure to produce them and in the
process will reaffirm our democracy as it was intended to operate.
The
executive branch is equally constipated due to a regulatory process
that involves lengthy periods of public input and the tendency of
Americans to litigate at every opportunity. When talking to foreigners, I
often find myself explaining that in the United States anybody can sue
anybody for anything—and usually does. The result all too often is a
process that is never actually final—there is always another move to
enable delay and plenty of people willing to make it. This is an example
of the sore loser problem. Nobody likes to lose, but instead of
accepting it gracefully and moving
on, it is now customary to never give up—to appeal endlessly to higher
and higher levels, clogging up the courts and ultimately dumping
everything in the lap of the Supreme Court.
All
this has produced a failing system of government that is proving itself
incapable of dealing with the huge challenges we currently face.
Congress has difficulty passing anything, and the executive branch has
difficulty implementing anything. This fuels the fire of
authoritarianism—people advocating simple solutions to complicated
problems.
Part
of the solution is to reaffirm the democratic process by abandoning
consensus and bringing issues to a vote and resolving them. That means
having winners and losers each time there is a vote, and those who lose
will no doubt be unhappy, but I think over time that is the path to
getting more things done and reaffirming our system of government. The
path of consensus takes us down the WTO road, and we know that is not a
path to success. End of rant.
William
Reinsch holds the Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center
for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
Commentary is
produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a
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solely those of the author(s).
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