Written off too soon: the WTO still carries most of world trade

This September, more people than ever made their way to Geneva for the World Trade Organization's Public Forum. With more than 4,600 participants, 540 speakers and 113 sessions, it was the largest Public Forum the WTO has ever held. That is telling in itself. At the very moment the multilateral trading system is being written off in the headlines, a record number of businesses, governments, civil-society voices and researchers showed up to argue about its future. ICC Netherlands was among them.

The mood was sober, and the message ran through almost every session: the trading system is under more pressure than at any point in a generation. The list of problems is long and familiar. The WTO's dispute-settlement system has been hobbled for years. New multilateral agreements are rare. Trade is increasingly used as a geopolitical instrument, and tariff conflicts follow one another in quick succession.

And yet the numbers tell a more hopeful story than the headlines about deglobalisation suggest. Around 72% of world merchandise trade still moves on WTO most-favoured-nation terms, down from roughly 80% two years ago, so the system still structures the majority of global commerce. And trade is not shrinking in importance: it accounts for a growing share of the world economy. A new report, launched at the Forum by the WTO together with ICC, put a figure on what is at stake. A world that keeps cooperating under common rules delivers close to 10% more economic growth than one that splinters into rival geopolitical blocs. The biggest losers from such fragmentation would be developing countries, where the loss could reach around a quarter of output. These are scenario comparisons rather than forecasts, but the direction is unmistakable.

This year's Forum, "Powering the Future," put services at the centre, and for good reason. Services already account for about two-thirds of global GDP, employ more people than any other sector, and make up a surprisingly large share, by some estimates close to half, of the value embedded in the goods we trade. The business voices were practical: a global logistics leader on what smoother rules would mean for small exporters, a sustainability-data platform on the cross-border data flows that now underpin supply chains. From the AI and data flows that power digital services, to the shipping lanes that carry more than 80% of goods and the chokepoints that threaten them from the Red Sea to the Strait of Hormuz, the discussion kept returning to one question: are the rules still fit for purpose?

ICC, which co-hosted the opening session with the International Institute for Sustainable Development, used the Forum to make the business case plain. Secretary-General John Denton reminded the room of ICC's founding role in 1919 as "merchants of peace": when governments cannot provide certainty, business can help build the rules and the trust that trade depends on. His ask was concrete. Not another stock-take, but reform with a deadline, and a willingness to move ahead among like-minded members where agreement between all 166 is out of reach. ICC's specific proposals included notifying industrial subsidies before they take effect, binding plurilateral rules on digital trade, AI, industrial policy and climate, and a "trade facilitation 2.0" agenda built on paperless trade, electronic documents, interoperable single windows and digital identity.

For a trading nation like the Netherlands, this is not an abstract debate. Dutch prosperity rests on open and predictable trade, on world-class services and logistics, and increasingly on digital and interoperable trade systems. It is exactly the agenda ICC Netherlands has been working on at home. Our WTO round table in The Hague in January, ahead of the Ministerial Conference, brought the WTO, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and senior Dutch businesses around one table. Our work on trade digitalisation, from alignment with the Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records to the UK-NL digital trade corridor, feeds directly into the "trade facilitation 2.0" that ICC is championing in Geneva.

So, is the WTO dead? Geneva's answer was a clear no, but with a condition attached. The system still carries most of world trade, and it still matters most to those with the least power to go it alone. What it needs now is not a eulogy, but reform, a dose of pragmatism, and a business community willing to help write the next chapter. ICC, and ICC Netherlands, intend to do exactly that.

Read more

WTO World Trade Report 2026: wto-ilibrary.org

WTO Public Forum 2026 (“Powering the Future”): wto.org

International Institute for Sustainable Development, ICC's co-organiser: iisd.org