WTO talks: As power exertion intensifies, multilateralism has become more relevant, not less

The international system is entering a phase that increasingly resembles an earlier era of geopolitics—one defined less by shared rules and more by competing spheres of influence. Signals emerging from Washington’s strategic thinking, particularly during the presidency of Donald Trump, point to a worldview in which power, leverage and bilateral bargaining take precedence over the norms and institutions that have guided global governance for decades.With the next Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) approaching, the future of multilateralism is in the spotlight.

Ministers from across the world will discuss the future of global trade rules at a time when the multilateral system is already under strain—from stalled negotiations and dispute settlement paralysis to the growing preference among major economies for bilateral and plurilateral arrangements. Against this backdrop, the broader geopolitical shift towards spheres of influence and transactional diplomacy raises a fundamental question: Can the WTO remain a credible platform for collective rulemaking or will it gradually be sidelined by power-driven bargaining among the largest economies? This matters profoundly for developing countries, given that a functioning multilateral system is one of the few mechanisms capable of balancing asymmetries of power in global trade.At the heart of this changing world order is the return of spheres of influence as an organizing principle of international politics.

In the decades following the Cold War, the prevailing assumption was that the world was moving towards a rules-based order. Multilateral institutions were designed to provide platforms where countries could negotiate, resolve disputes and pursue