Gabrielle Marceau’s scholarship captivated me already during my master’s at the Graduate Institute in Geneva. I was studying jurisdictional conflicts between regional trade agreements (RTAs) and the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) dispute settlement mechanism when I came across her article “News from Geneva on RTAs and WTO-plus, WTO-More, and WTO-Minus*.*”<fnref n="1" /> Gabrielle’s analysis of the interplay between multilateral rules and free trade agreements was eye-opening.

Aside from the clarity of her writing and analysis, I was struck by the simple yet profound typology she was proposing. According to Gabrielle, RTAs could “go deeper, broader, or deprive Members of WTO rights.”<fnref n="2" /> Viewing the relationship between RTAs and WTO rules through the lens of WTO-plus, WTO-more and WTO-minus respectively, provided an invaluable intellectual framework that I have gone back to, time after time, over the years.

I have had the pleasure of working with Gabrielle for many years afterwards. I was her teaching assistant during my PhD in Geneva and later was glad to count her as a colleague at the University of Ottawa. We collaborated on a diverse range of trade topics. But no subject matter is more closely associated in my mind with Gabrielle’s work than those pages I first encountered. It is therefore fitting, I think, to revisit the theme of WTO-plus, WTO-minus, and WTO-more provisions in trade agreements some 15 years after her initial reflections and to ask what are the “news from Geneva” today.

When Gabrielle first wrote her article, bilateral and regional trade agreements were seen as vibrant engines of normative innovation in fierce competition with the WTO. With parallel rules and dispute settlement processes, Gabrielle was concerned about the normative coherence of states’ obligations in the WTO and in Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). She also feared that “RTAs [could] handicap Members in their WTO negotiations”<fnref n="3" /> as resources and concessions were shifted away from the multilateral forum. In short, she was concerned that the rapid growth of RTAs could crowd out WTO rulemaking or at least throw sand in the gears of the WTO by setting up parallel and perhaps competing rules and processes.

At the same time, the mood in Geneva was also hopeful. Gabrielle speculated that RTAs could “serve as experiments for future multilateralization.”<fnref n="4" /> Her comment echoes an expectation (or aspiration) widely held in Geneva at the time that States would eventually “multilateralize regionalism.”<fnref n="5" /> Moreover, Gabrielle expressed confidence that WTO rules were “framing and controlling the conclusion of RTAs”<fnref n="6" /> thereby keeping the sprawling FTA “spaghetti bowl” under centralized control and within firm normative bounds.

The world has since changed in ways that would have been hard to predict in 2009. The Appellate Body (AB), which back then was admiringly called the WTO’s “crown jewel,”<fnref n="7" /> has disappeared through the persistent blocking of the appointment of new members by the United States (US) crippling dispute settlement among WTO members.<fnref n="8" /> The organization’s negotiation arm has fared little better. Progress on multilateral rulemaking has only produced marginal successes and efforts to make progress through plurilateral talks have been slowed down by persistent resistance.<fnref n="9" /> Finally, the WTO has been sidelined in major contemporary trade tensions and its rules have proven incapable to either respond to Chinese non-market practices or US protectionism.

What does this progressive marginalization mean for RTAs and their relationship to the WTO? This article revisits Gabrielle’s 2009 analysis<fnref n="10" /> of WTO-plus, WTO-more and WTO-minus provisions in RTAs to better understand what has changed over the past fifteen years and to re-define the interplay between trade regionalism and multilateralism for the present. It argues that Gabrielle’s analysis was profoundly marked by the importance of the WTO in 2009 as the central node of the international trading system. Today’s multilateralism is more decentralized, the WTO is reinventing itself in the image of RTAs rather than the other way around, and all while (or because) WTO-minus trends in RTAs risk pulling the multilateral web of rules apart. While Geneva was the core of the trade universe in 2009, today it increasingly looks like the periphery. No news from Geneva, however, does not necessarily mean bad news. A more decentralized multilateralism can take off the pressure from the WTO and help the organization find its role in a more contested global landscape.

<footnote n="1">Gabrielle Marceau, “News from Geneva on RTAs and WTO-plus, WTO-More, and WTO-Minus” (2009) 103 Proceedings ASIL Annual Meeting 124 [Marceau, “News”].</footnote>

<footnote n="2">*Ibid* at 126.</footnote>

<footnote n="3">*Ibid* at 128.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">Marceau, “News”, *supra* note 1 at 126.</footnote>

<footnote n="5">Richard E Baldwin, “Multilateralising Regionalism: Spaghetti Bowls as Building Blocs on the Path to Global Free Trade” (2006) 29:11 World Econ 1451; Richard E Baldwin & Patrick Low, eds, *Multilateralizing Regionalism: Challenges for the Global Trading System* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).</footnote>

<footnote n="6">Marceau, “News”, *supra* note 1 at 126.</footnote>

<footnote n="7">Sungjoon Cho, “Of the World Trade Court’s Burden” (2009) 20:3 Eur J Intl L 675.</footnote>

<footnote n="8">Richard Ouellet, “La crise de l’Organe d’appel: causes, répercussions et voies de sortie” in Richard Ouellet & Geneviève Dufour, eds, *Réforme de l’OMC: vers un nouveau multilatéralisme économique* (Sherbrooke: Presses de la SQDI, 2024) 31, online: <pressesdelasqdi.org/publications/reforme-de-lomc>.</footnote>

<footnote n="9">Robert Howse & Joanna Langille, “Continuity and Change in the World Trade Organization: Pluralism Past, Present, and Future” (2023) 117:1 AJIL 1.</footnote>

<footnote n="10">Marceau, “News”, *supra* note 1.</footnote>
# I. WTO-plus: Decentralized Multilateralism

States use RTAs to go beyond the baseline commitments made under the WTO agreements by concluding WTO-plus agreements that liberalize their goods or services trade further. Already the original *General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade* (*GATT*), in Article XXIV,<fnref n="11" /> recognized that member states should be able to deepen their economic integration as long they thereby do not erect barriers against third states. WTO-plus obligations continue to be aligned with the WTO’s mandate to advance trade liberalization.

While WTO-plus RTAs are therefore explicitly encouraged by WTO rules, their relationship to trade multilateralism is not without friction. Gabrielle wrote that such arrangements may “discourage multilateral negotiations, as the price paid for bilateral market access is a disincentive to share multilaterally the benefit of the same market access.”<fnref n="12" /> In other words, regional and multilateral liberalization can be seen as being in competition. RTAs risk crowding out advances in WTO negotiations as states strive for a more exclusive access to a trading partner’s market.

Gabrielle also worried about duplication. In her view, the normative overlap inherent in WTO-plus obligations raised concerns over coherence and competence.<fnref n="13" /> What if similar rules in RTAs and the WTO give rise to parallel dispute settlement procedures? And what happens if these dispute settlement procedures yield conflicting outcomes? Practice abated these concerns but never negated their conceptual salience. In *Mexico—Tax Measures on Soft Drinks and Other Beverages*, the Appellate Body explicitly rejected attempts to enforce RTA rules through WTO dispute settlement.<fnref n="14" /> Moreover, states voted with their feet and settled regional trade disputes in the WTO rather than via RTAs.<fnref n="15" />

The marginalization of the WTO over the past 15 years, however, now casts WTO-plus rules in a very different light. They look more like a failsafe than a competitor.

Because of their WTO-plus rules, most RTAs reproduce much of the WTO rule book. While RTAs often go deeper than the WTO baseline, they use the WTO’s legal scaffolding to structure their concessions and organize their commitments. Indeed, Todd Allee, Manfred Elsig and Andrew Lugg found that RTAs routinely copy chapters verbatim from the WTO agreements.<fnref n="16" /> With the benefit of hindsight, this widespread practice looks less like risky normative duplication and more like a far-sighted attempt to shore up trade rules. Like multiple engines on an airplane, carbon copied rules create redundancy in the system that may look costly and even unnecessary in normal times but can prove critical when the system is under stress. As Marc Froese put it, such a layered approach of stacking similar RTA rules and WTO rules on top each other “[insures] against the breakdown of multilateral institutions of trade governance.”<fnref n="17" />

The same is true for dispute settlement procedures. Since the demise of the WTO Appellate Body, there has been a notable uptick in dispute settlement under RTAs.<fnref n="18" /> The *United States*—*Mexico*—*Canada Agreement* (*USMCA*)<fnref n="19" /> has seen five inter-state disputes, more than were ever brought under the *North American Free Trade Agreement* (*NAFTA*)<fnref n="20" />, which had suffered from dysfunction as parties could block the establishment of panels.<fnref n="21" /> More generally, as many WTO members must fear that the losing parties effectively blocks a WTO panel report by appealing into the void left by the non-existent Appellate Body, states may well prefer RTA dispute settlement as the more reliable and enforceable alternative.

In short, the proliferation of WTO-plus norms in RTAs and their enforcement through third party adjudication has led to a decentralization of trade obligations. As Benjamin Faude explains, this decentralization has enhanced the resilience of the global trading system by making it less vulnerable to disruption of its multilateral core.<fnref n="22" /> Even if the WTO were to disappear tomorrow, its rules would live on in the hundreds of RTAs designed in its image. Some scholars have described investment law as a decentralized form of multilateralism because its basis consists of thousands of similar treaties.<fnref n="23" /> Similarly, the trade regime increasingly looks like decentralized multilateralism.

At a time when the WTO is challenged across its different functions, RTAs thus appear to play an important reinforcement role. Rather than challenging or crowding out multilateral rules, they act as safety net, creating a second layer of WTO-mirroring WTO-plus rules and enforcement mechanisms. Seen in this light, today’s perception of WTO-plus rules as a decentralized form of multilateralism appears more positive than the 2009 view from Geneva suggested.

<footnote n="11">*General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade*, 30 October 1947, 58 UNTS 187 art 24 [*GATT 1947*].</footnote>

<footnote n="12">Marceau, “News”, *supra* note 1 at 127.</footnote>

<footnote n="13">*Ibid* at 126—27.</footnote>

<footnote n="14">*Mexico—Tax Measures on Soft Drinks and Other Beverages* (2006), WTO Doc WT/DS308/AB/R at para 79 (Dispute Settlement Body), online: <wto.org> [perma.cc/Q5Y9-FWT7].</footnote>

<footnote n="15">Geraldo Vidigal, “Why Is There So Little Litigation under Free Trade Agreements? Retaliation and Adjudication in International Dispute Settlement” (2018) 20:4 J Intl Econ L 927.</footnote>

<footnote n="16">Todd Allee, Manfred Elsig & Andrew Lugg, “The Ties between the World Trade Organization and Preferential Trade Agreements: A Textual Analysis” (2017) 20:2 J Intl Econ L 333.</footnote>

<footnote n="17">Marc D Froese, “Regional Trade Agreements and the Paradox of Dispute Settlement” (2014) 11:3 Manchester J Intl Econ L 367 at 387.</footnote>

<footnote n="18">Chad P Bown & Petros C Mavroidis, “Things Have Changed: Dispute Settlement Inside and Outside of the WTO in 2022” (2024) 23:3 World Trade Rev 269.</footnote>

<footnote n="19">*United States*—*Mexico*—*Canada Agreement*, 30 September 2018, Can TS 2018 No 20.</footnote>

<footnote n="20">*North American Free Trade Agreement*, 17 December 1992, Can TS 1994 No 2 (Canada, Mexico, and US).</footnote>

<footnote n="21">Earl Anthony Wayne & Diego Marroquín Bitar, *USMCA at Four: Measuring Success, Addressing China, and Working Towards the 2026 Review* (Washington DC: Wilson Center Policy Brief, 2024) <wilsoncenter.org> [perma.cc/9GAP-68YW]; J Anthony VanDuzer, “State-to-State Dispute Settlement Under the USMCA: Better than NAFTA?” in Alfonso López de la Osa Escribano & James W Skelton Jr, eds, *Essays in Honour of Professor* *Stephen T Zamora: A Life between Mexico and the United States* (Houston: Arte Publico, 2022) 121.</footnote>

<footnote n="22">Benjamin Faude, “Breaking Gridlock: How Path Dependent Layering Enhances Resilience in Global Trade Governance” (2020) 11:4 Global Pol’y 448 at 450.</footnote>

<footnote n="23">Stephan W Schill, *The Multilateralization of International Investment Law* (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).</footnote>
# II. WTO-more: Multilateralism’s New Core

States also undertake commitments in RTAs that are broader in scope than the WTO agreements. Modern RTAs cover provisions on competition policy, investment protection, small and medium-sized enterprises, labour and the environment, just to name a few. Gabrielle highlighted that these, what she calls “WTO-more” norms, can occasionally conflict with WTO rules, say when a violation of an unrelated RTA obligation triggers a countermeasure that is WTO-inconsistent.<fnref n="24" /> More generally, though, the perception of such WTO-more RTA rules from Geneva was benign. These RTA clauses simply regulated matters that the WTO did not cover.

In the parlance of the early 2000s, many of these WTO-more disciplines were perceived as “trade and…” issue.<fnref n="25" /> They described how the core trade rules interact and relate to non-trade concerns, including labour, competition, environment or human rights. While these “trade and…” issues were seen as important, particularly for the legitimacy of trade agreements, they also remained peripheral for most trade professionals and did not form core part of the trade canon. This was a siloed view of trade.

The division between trade and non-trade issues partly reflected the market-liberal economic orthodoxy of the time. The purpose of core trade rules was to liberalize the movement of goods and services across borders in order to allow companies and countries to reap the efficiency gains from trade and to build interconnected global value chains that optimized the allocation of productive processes. Insofar as non-trade issues were a concern, they were best dealt with via non-trade policy interventions such as domestic tax policies and adjustment programs for workers in displaced industries.<fnref n="26" />

This perspective has changed dramatically since 2009 and WTO-more issues have increasingly become seen as WTO-core issues.

Consider first the place of WTO-more issues in RTAs themselves. The World Bank maintains a database that codes 391 FTAs across 14 WTO-plus and 38 WTO-more subject areas.<fnref n="27" /> By summing values, one can create an index of WTO-plus and WTO-more issue coverage per treaty. Figure 1 tracks the evolution of WTO-plus and WTO-more issues as moving average of the WTO-plus and WTO-more scope of agreements signed each year. The results are revealing.

After a first uptick in the early 2000s, the coverage of WTO-plus issues in RTAs plateaued, averaging around 11 WTO-plus areas per year. This reflects the above-described trend of RTAs mirroring WTO disciplines. While coverage of WTO-plus issues in RTAs has been stable over time, WTO-more matters increased significantly in the 2010s from an average of 8 WTO-more issues per FTA in 2009 to 14 WTO-more issues per FTA in 2019<fnref n="28" />.

What Gabrielle observed in 2009 remains true. These WTO-more issues occur in varying frequencies in FTAs. Competition (70% of RTAs), capital movements (55% of RTAs) and investment (55% of RTAs) are very common. By contrast, illegal immigration (7% of RTAs), nuclear safety (5% of RTAs) or civil protection (2% of RTAs) are only addressed in a small minority of FTAs.<fnref n="29" /> What has clearly changed since 2009, however, is the importance of WTO-more issues in RTAs. Innovation in RTAs lies in WTO-more issues.

<figure><img src="image_1.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1 — Growth of WTO-plus and WTO-more coverage in RTAs<fnref n="30" /></figcaption></figure>

This quantitative shift has been accompanied by a qualitative shift. The siloed view of trade and non-trade issues dominant in the early 2000s has been giving way to a more integrated perspective that recognizes social and environmental challenges, but also foreign policy and security considerations as part of a “multipurpose trade policy.”<fnref n="31" /> Moreover, the need to rebalance and to redistribute the gains from trade directly through RTAs rather than through national flanking policies has produced a shift from the efficiency focus of market liberalism.<fnref n="32" /> These shifts are reflected both in the rules of RTAs and their relationship to the WTO.

RTAs concluded over the past decade account more explicitly for the social and environmental costs of trade under the umbrella of “inclusive”, “progressive” or “sustainable” trade.<fnref n="33" /> RTAs today contain rules on indigenous communities, gender, labour and sustainable development that explicitly seek to rebalance trade rules. As a sign that these issues have moved from the periphery to the center of trade policy, note that many of these disciplines are combined with effective enforcement mechanisms. The EU is making its sustainable development chapters subject to third party dispute settlement.<fnref n="34" /> The *USCMA*’s rapid response mechanisms, which investigate core labour law violations in Mexico, has the busiest workload of all the agreement’s dispute resolution mechanisms.<fnref n="35" />

As a result, it would be misleading to characterize these WTO-more issues as “trade and…” concerns. They are explicitly designed to affect corporate incentives on how and what to trade. They create new sticks, such as market access barriers, for companies and countries that violate labour laws or that fail to meet sustainability standards. They also provide carrots for marginalized communities to play a larger role in trade. In short, these WTO-more issues have become central trade concerns.

Of course, this conclusion would not be news to Gabrielle who has been at the forefront of pointing to the “international coherence in the international social and economic order” and noted the opportunities of integrating of trade and labour considerations, for example.<fnref n="36" /> At the same time, it is important to underscore how far the world moved from the trade silos of the early 2000s.

The shifting paradigms are visible in the WTO itself. Gabrielle has frequently pointed out that the WTO is “reinventing” itself.<fnref n="37" /> With the conclusion of the first fisheries subsidies agreement, the organization, for the first time, negotiated a sustainability treaty, which seeks not to expand trade but to curb harm due to overfishing.<fnref n="38" /> In the same vein, the WTO has been home to many initiatives on WTO-more issues. Some are formal, like the negotiations of a sustainable investment facilitation agreement<fnref n="39" /> and an e-commerce agreement<fnref n="40" /> as part of the joint initiatives process. Others are informal workstreams, such as the Informal Dialogue on Plastic Pollution<fnref n="41" /> or the Informal Working Group on Trade and Gender.<fnref n="42" /> Together, they leave little doubt that WTO-more issues have become new WTO-core issues, too.

<footnote n="24">Marceau, “News”, *supra* note 1 at 127.</footnote>

<footnote n="25">Joel P Trachtman, “Institutional Linkage: Transcending ‘Trade and…’” (2002) 96:1 AJIL 77.</footnote>

<footnote n="26">Andrew Lang, *World Trade Law after Neoliberalism: Re-Imagining the Global Economic Order* (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).</footnote>

<footnote n="27">World Bank, “Deep Trade Agreements database 2.0” (2024), online: <datatopics.worldbank.org> [perma.cc/PAV2-DZKJ] [World Bank, “Deep Trade Agreements”]. For background, see Aaditya Mattoo, Nadia Rocha & Michele Ruta, eds, *Handbook of Deep Trade Agreements* (Washington DC: World Bank, 2020), online: <documents1.worldbank.org> [perma.cc/5GN9-B65S].</footnote>

<footnote n="28">World Bank, “Deep Trade Agreements”, *supra* note 27.</footnote>

<footnote n="29">*Ibid*.</footnote>

<footnote n="30">Author’s calculation and visualization based on data from the World Bank, “Deep Trade Agreements”, *supra* note 27.</footnote>

<footnote n="31">Nicolas Lamp, “Toward Multipurpose Trade Policy? How competing narratives about globalization are reshaping international trade cooperation” (15 January 2023), online: <iisd.org> [perma.cc/D4F6-QNN9].</footnote>

<footnote n="32">Joost Pauwelyn & Charlotte Sieber-Gasser, “Addressing Negative Effects of Trade Liberalization: Unilateral and Mutually Agreed Flanking Policies” (2024) 23:5 World Trade Rev 554.</footnote>

<footnote n="33">Patricia Goff, “Inclusive Trade: Justice, Innovation, or More of the Same?” (2021) 35:2 Ethics & Intl Affairs 273.</footnote>

<footnote n="34">Gracia Marín Durán, “Innovations and Implications of the Trade and Sustainable Development Chapter in the EU—Korea Free Trade Agreement” in James Harrison, ed, *The European Union and South* *Korea* (Edimburgh: Edimburgh University Press, 2013) 124.</footnote>

<footnote n="35">Wayne & Marroquín Bitar, *supra* note 21.</footnote>

<footnote n="36">Gabrielle Marceau, “Instances of international coherence in the international social and economic order: The integration of trade and labour considerations” in Arancha González & Marion Jansen, eds, *Women Shaping Global Economic Governanc*e (London: Centre for Economic Policy Research Press, 2019) 101.</footnote>

<footnote n="37">See, for example, Gabrielle Marceau, “Never Waste a Good Crisis: The End of the WTO Dream, or the Beginning of Something Greater? ” (2020) 17:2 International Organizations Law Review 345—49.</footnote>

<footnote n="38">WTO, *Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies*, WTO Dec WT/L/1144 (2022), online: <docs.wto.org> [perma.cc/E94D-PVN3].</footnote>

<footnote n="39">WTO, *Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement*, WTO Doc INF/IFD/W/55 (2024), online: <docs.wto.org> [perma.cc/CE2M-H7PD].</footnote>

<footnote n="40">WTO, *Joint Statement Initiative on Electronic Commerce*, WTO Doc INF/ECOM/87 (2024), online: <docs.wto.org> [perma.cc/FMU6-ZXU6].</footnote>

<footnote n="41">WTO, *Informal Dialogue on Plastic Pollution and Environmentally Sustainable Plastics Trade* (2022), online: <docs.wto.org> [perma.cc/XJD4-MEXX].</footnote>

<footnote n="42">WTO, *Interim Report Following the Buenos Aires Joint Declaration on Trade and Women’s Economic Empowerment*, WTO Doc WT/L/1095/Rev.1 (2020), online: <docs.wto.org> [perma.cc/GY5F-Y9JE].</footnote>
# III. WTO-minus: Existential Threat to Multilateralism

The final type of RTA commitments Gabrielle wrote about were WTO-minus provisions that deprive states of rights that they otherwise enjoy under the WTO agreements. The example she provides is an RTA between the US and Peru that circumscribes the use of compulsory licenses, which are part of the flexibilities that the *Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights* *Agreement* (*TRIPS Agreement*) explicitly provides.<fnref n="43" /> What worried Gabrielle was not necessarily that WTO members forgo rights *inter-se*. Rather, she pointed out that third states, like Mali, may then lose access to affordable medication from Peru or the US because these WTO members would not issue compulsory licences. The example illustrates that WTO-minus provisions can be problematic for the multilateral trading system because they can negatively affect third parties.

The degree of risks depends on what WTO rules the RTA contracts out of. WTO-minus provisions could take one of three forms with an attendant increase in risk to multilateralism: (1) agreements to diminish obligations owed to each other under WTO law, (2) agreements to give away rights granted under the WTO and (3) agreements that diminish obligations owed towards third parties.

WTO law and practice is somewhat inconsistent when it comes to the first one. In *Peru—Additional Duty on Imports of Certain Agricultural Products* the AB ruled that an RTA could not modify the commitments between WTO members *inter-se*.<fnref n="44" /> In practice, however, WTO members have used similar WTO-minus *inter-se* agreements to adjust their WTO commitments, for instance, through mutually agreed settlements.<fnref n="45" /> Commentators tend to agree that as long as the RTA itself conforms with Article XXIV,<fnref n="46" /> such *inter-se* agreements are not inherently problematic from a WTO perspective, as they pose little risk to third parties.<fnref n="47" />

More problematic are WTO-minus arrangements that diminish rights—especially when, as the compulsory license example illustrated, the ultimate beneficiary of that right is a third country. Unfortunately, such WTO-minus applications have grown in popularity. In *USCMA*, the three parties agreed essentially to forgo their right to conclude trade agreements with non-market economies.<fnref n="48" /> The clause, directed at China, set a dangerous precedent for trading off market access within blocks by renouncing (future) market access vis-à-vis third states. At the same time, from a WTO law perspective, such practice seems unproblematic given that the WTO agreements protect the observance of current commitments and not future benefits arising out of the exercise of other member’s rights.

WTO-minus clauses that contract out of obligations towards third countries are the most destructive kind. That is why *GATT* Article XXIV<fnref n="49" /> stipulates that the formation of RTAs must not raise trade barriers vis-à-vis third parties. RTAs that include such WTO-minus provisions would thus not benefit from the exception to “most favoured nation” treatment that RTAs otherwise enjoy and lead to a violation of the WTO agreements. That condition in *GATT* Article XXIV is important. Third states already lose through the conclusion of RTAs, because the deepening trade ties between RTA members divert trade away from third states.<fnref n="50" /> Imposing additional costs on third countries would double the harm and call into question the non-discrimination premise underpinning the WTO.

Unfortunately, we may be at the cusp of seeing more such WTO-minus RTAs. The salience of WTO law has been in rapid decline in some corners. At the time of writing, the US has *de facto* exited the rules-based multilateral trading system by imposing unilateral tariffs on all its trading partners.<fnref n="51" /> Key officials in Washington have suggested that countries, such as Canada and Mexico, should pursue deeper economic integration with the US and mirror US barriers on the rest of the world, particularly China.<fnref n="52" /> Such a block-based approach of free trade within the block and high barriers vis-à-vis the rest of the world would pose an existential threat to the multilateral trading system.

WTO has recently made every effort to recall the benefits of the global trading system. Its research has shown that most of global trade is still governed by WTO rules.<fnref n="53" /> It also argued that at a time when countries are concerned about supply chain disruptions and resilience and seek to diversify their trade relations, multilateral rules provide the most robust framework.<fnref n="54" /> It remains to be seen whether that message is heard. The geopolitical fragmentation into blocks of opposing WTO-minus RTAs could blow up the multilateral trading system. Or, its threat may be enough to rally countries around the WTO flag to preserve the WTO system. What seems certain is that WTO-minus RTAs have evolved from a minor challenge to an existential threat of the WTO.

<footnote n="43">Marceau, “News”, *supra* note 1 at 127; *Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights*, 15 April 1994, 1869 UNTS 299, Annex 1C of *Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization*.</footnote>

<footnote n="44">*Peru—Additional Duty on Imports of Certain Agricultural Products* (2015), WTO Doc WT/DS457/AB/R at para 5.111 (Appellate Body Report), online: <wto.org> [perma.cc/A5TL-YAFK].</footnote>

<footnote n="45">Wolfgang Alschner, “Amicable Settlements of WTO Disputes: Bilateral Solutions in a Multilateral System” (2014) 13:1 World Trade Rev 65.</footnote>

<footnote n="46">*GATT 1947*, *supra* note 11.</footnote>

<footnote n="47">Gregory Shaffer & L Alan Winters, “FTA Law in WTO Dispute Settlement: Peru*—*Additional Duty and the Fragmentation of Trade Law” (2017) 16:2 World Trade Rev 303.</footnote>

<footnote n="48">Geraldo Vidigal, “A Really Big Button That Doesn’t Do Anything? The Anti-NME Clause in US Trade Agreements Between Law and Geoeconomics” (2020) 23:1 J Intl Econ L 45.</footnote>

<footnote n="49">*GATT 1947*, *supra* note 11.</footnote>

<footnote n="50">Jagdish Bhagwati, “Preferential Trade Agreements: The Wrong Road” (1995) 27 L Pol’y Intl Bus 865, online: <scholarship.law.columbia.edu> [perma.cc/WN9W-42A8].</footnote>

<footnote n="51">The White House, « Executive Order 14257—Regulating Imports with a Reciprocal Tariff to Rectify Trade Practices that Contribute to Large and Persistent Annual United States Goods Trade Deficits » (2 April 2025), online: <whitehouse.gov> [perma.cc/SH72-YPMK].</footnote>

<footnote n="52">“*Bessent Calls on Canada to Match Mexico’s Pitch on China Tariffs”*, *BNN Bloomberg* (28 February 2025), online: <bnnbloomberg.ca> [perma.cc/MTT7-N8PT].</footnote>

<footnote n="53">Tomasz Gonciarz & Thomas Verbeet, “*Significance of Most-Favoured-Nation Terms in Global Trade: A Comprehensive Analysis”*(2025) WTO, Working Paper No ERSD-2025-02, online: <wto.org> [perma.cc/6CAM-AHQR].</footnote>

<footnote n="54">Ralph Ossa, “Today’s supply chain disruptions reaffirm the importance of a multilateral trading system based on WTO rules” (2 June 2023), online: <wto.org> [perma.cc/2DPZ-X2B8].</footnote>
# —

The WTO has lost its central place in the world trading system. With its negotiations stalled, its dispute settlement system diminished, and its rules challenged—especially by the world’s superpower—the news is coming not from Geneva, but from the rest of the world. RTAs have emerged as a failsafe net both to replicate and to deepen WTO commitments. The re-calibration of trade principles through the addition of WTO-more issues that situate economic exchanges in a broader sustainability and inclusiveness lens has been pioneered in RTAs and is moving back from there to the WTO. Finally, RTAs, through WTO-minus provisions, are challenging foundational norms of the WTO and risk fragmenting global trade into geo-economic blocks.

The relationship between RTAs and the WTO has thus changed fundamentally between 2009 and 2025. That is both an opportunity and a threat for the multilateral trading system. The relative marginalization of the WTO has decentralized multilateral rules. There are now hundreds of carbon copies of its rulebook in RTAs that span the globe. This decentralization makes the trading system more resilient to normative challenges directed at its centre.

The innovation, especially on WTO-more issues, has also moved pressure off the centre. Likeminded states have demonstrated that they can make quick progress from gender chapters to new sustainability rules in RTAs. The WTO can reap the benefit of this norm development as a second mover, reinvent itself, and, eventually, find its place in the new trading landscape.

All this, however, depends on whether WTO members continue to use RTAs primarily to advance a WTO-plus and WTO-more agenda. If they instead roll back liberalization through WTO-minus rules, the WTO may be challenged like never before. Whatever the direction of travel, however, the WTO is likely to be more spectator than driver of change with the fate of future multilateralism resting on the future developments in the RTA space.