TWN Info Service on WTO and Trade Issues (Mar26/30)
27 March 2026
Third World Network

TWN MC14 Update No. 3

U.S. Tells WTO:
The Age of Multilateralism Is Over
27 March 2026

Kuala Lumpur*, Goh Chien Yen - The United States declared that the future of global trade lies in bilateral and plurilateral deals, not multilateral ones in its official statement delivered at the World Trade Organisation’s 14^th Ministerial Conference (WT/MIN(26)/ST/24).

The message from USTR Jamieson Greer rationalises President Trump's tariff regime as a necessary correction to a broken system. The WTO, in his telling, has presided over imbalances that produced "deindustrialisation, dependency, and despair" in developed and developing economies alike. His tariff actions, he claimed, are laying the foundations for a better order.

The practical implications of Greer's vision are significant. He called on members to explore incorporating plurilateral agreements into the WTO's architecture, warning that if the pathway is blocked, countries will negotiate elsewhere. He proposed objective criteria for special and differential treatment, arguing it is "politically unacceptable" for some members to claim benefits meant for the poorest. And he called for "an honest and frank conversation" on the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) principle, describing it as rigid and as preventing countries from optimising their trade relationships.

That last point alarmed developing country negotiators. "The key motivation for most vulnerable developing countries to participate in the multilateral trading system has been their existence on an equal footing via MFN," one African negotiator said. If the new modality is bilateral and plurilateral deal-making, smaller and poorer countries risk being shut out of arrangements shaped by power rather than rules.

The statement was notably silent on two issues central to developing country concerns: restoring the WTO's paralysed two-tier dispute settlement system, and reforming agricultural trade, including the long-unresolved permanent solution for public stockholding programmes.

Meanwhile, the U.S. doubled down on its demand to make the moratorium on customs duties for electronic transmissions permanent. Greer called this "a legacy-making issue for Cameroon as host" and warned Washington would not accept another temporary extension. The irony was not lost on negotiators. As one put it: the U.S. treats a temporary moratorium as legacy-defining but considers MFN, a foundational principle embedded in the trading system for decades, as a concept with "shortcomings."

A South American negotiator pointed to another gap in the U.S. framing. The reform agenda focuses on tariffs while ignoring the subsidies that distort competition. The latest U.S. notifications show subsidies for cotton and sugar running at close to 20% and 40% of the respective sector size, a level developing countries cannot even contemplate.

The Yaoundé conference was supposed to be what the WTO Director-General called a "turning point." Greer's statement suggests Washington has a rather different turning point in mind: one where the rules-based multilateral system gives way to a patchwork of deals among the willing, with benefits flowing to partners rather than, as he put it, "free riders."

*With inputs from TWN delegation at MC14, Yaounde, Cameroon. This article is based on original news report, “USTR Warns of “New Trading Order” as US Rejects Temporary E-Commerce Deal,” Yaounde, 25 March, ( D Ravi Kanth).”