Introduction.
"Following Ikenberry (2020), it is easy to accept that, in the present state of growing anarchy in the world (dis)order , big and main middle powers remain fully occupied by the “problems of anarchy”, such as hegemonic struggles, competition for security and spheres of influence, or reactionary nationalism. However, he continues, they are much more threatened by ‘emergent, interconnected, cascading transnational dangers’: pandemic diseases, financial crises, dangerously encompassing pollution threats and widespread nuclear proliferation, to mention a few.
Loss of the ability to keep and secure stable and intensive international trade flows is a major transnational threat. Such activity is crucial for harmonious progress among democracies and an encompassing welfare-enhancing goal that should include a plurality of regimes.
While abuse of the panacea of free trade has been progressively giving way to more realistic views towards fair or fairer trade, other objectives to trade gained voice. Job creation led the growing set of discontents with globalisation; it is now evident that securing employment for the less qualified and those displaced by the international efficiency mantra should not be left to half-baked adaptation policies. The environment needs care, the digital must be tackled, and politics and special interests—ever present—must be kept, more often than not, at bay.
Though not yet in profound hibernation, the related international institution, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), has been vilified and bypassed, sometimes becoming a puppet institution. The present state of fairly generalised un-governance is a preliminary step to chaos. Exclusion and creation of different, autonomous trade circles would be a move backwards, with evolving serious consequences.
How to reconcile the aggressive, disruptive and footloose aspects of present-day trade with a better, minimally fairer and more welfare-improving international version of the same practice, under the aegis of a modern and flexible international institution— appealing to all—that would assure an adequate level of governance?
This Note addresses this ambitious challenge by proposing deep changes in the present system of trade governance. The next section briefly describes the modern issues that have transformed the standard pattern and uses of trade, and then the problems with the WTO. It works as a building block for the proposal presented in section 3. Section 4 concludes with a somewhat enlarged view."