Angela Ellard on the 2026 WTO Public Forum
The Trade Guys
Former WTO Deputy Director-General Angela Ellard joins The Trade Guys to discuss her recent observations from the WTO Public Forum in Geneva.
Key takeaways
- The WTO Public Forum in Geneva attracted 4,000 registrants, signaling renewed interest from the private sector.
- The MFN principle is no longer considered sacrosanct, with members openly discussing its potential for reform or adaptation.
Main topics
- WTO Public Forum Geneva
- Most Favored Nation (MFN) Principle
Notable quotes
It would be arrogant to say we got everything right 30 years ago.
Conclusion
While the WTO faces significant structural challenges and US skepticis
Transcript preview
Speaker 4 (0:00) I'm Scott. I'm Bill. And we're the Trade Guys. Speaker 2 (0:07) You're listening to the Trade Guys, a podcast produced by CSIS, where we talk about trade in terms that everyone can understand. I'm Alex Kisly, and I'm here with Scott Miller and Bill Reinsch, the CSIS Trade Guys. Speaker 2 (0:21) This is Trade Guy Scott. Speaker 3 (0:22) Thanks for listening to The Trade Guys. On this week's episode, we have a special guest, Angela Allard, well-known in the Washington trade community, longtime chief counsel of the Trade Staff Waste and Means Committee on the Republican side. But most recently, in the past four years, she has been the deputy director general of the WTO. Angela has just returned from Geneva and will tell us about the WTO public forum and her conclusions about the future of multilateral trade. All this and more on the Trade Guys. Speaker 4 (0:54) Well, hello, listeners. Trade guy Bill here with a cold. So please forgive me for the coughing and wheezing that I hope you won't hear, but which may be inevitable. Once again, we have a guest this time. We have a special guest. I think we said on a previous podcast, all our guests are special, but some of them are more special than others, like an animal farm. And this is one of the more special ones. It's Angela Ellert, who many of you know, either personally or by reputation, I'm sure. who is currently a non-residence senior advisor at CSIS, but recently has come off, well, actually a year ago, four years of service as the deputy director general of the WTO, where she, among other things, shepherded through implementation of the fisheries agreement, the last big thing they did, which is, I think, a significant accomplishment, and also had to deal, I think, painfully with the WTO budget, which we probably won't ask you about, but out of trying to be merciful. But it was a distinguished four years. And prior to that, she spent 26 years, believe it or not, on the Hill as a chief trade counsel to the House Ways and Means Committee, trade subcommittee. And for a Hill veteran like me, her most astonishing accomplishment was that she survived six chairman and ranking members. And you know, on a committee, senior staff often comes and goes with the change of chairman. The new ones bring in their people and the old people go off to do something else. I think it's a tribute to Angela's professionalism and competence, which I witnessed firsthand as a lobbyist and when I was in the government. So, Angela, we're glad to have you. And as you might imagine, listeners, we'll be talking, I think, primarily, maybe not exclusively, about the WTO, partly because Angela is just back from the WTO public forum, which was last week in Geneva. And I'll ask her to start off a brief word about what that was for people who don't know about it. and then to tell us not so much about what you learned there, but more about how you're feeling these days about the future of the WTO, how optimistic you are. We all know that it's in, I think, a difficult situation for a lot of reasons, one of which is the current US administration, but it's by far not the only reason. We spent many minutes on this podcast blaming the Indians or the Chinese for various sins, not to mention the Americans. So give us your take on where you think things stand and where they're going in the future and how optimistic you are. Well, Speaker 1 (3:17) first of all, Bill and Scott, thank you so much for having me today. Being on Trade Guys has been on my bucket list. So it's very exciting to be part of this. Thank you very much. Yes, I just got back from four or five days in Geneva for the public forum. The public forum, it's an interesting animal. It's something that happens once a year. At the WTO, it's an effort to bring the public, literally, into the WTO. There were 4,000 registrants, people from business, civil society, NGOs, non-governmental organizations, who had meetings and panels alongside ambassadors and delegates from the WTO members. So it's a tremendous opportunity for interaction, and it's a bit of a reality check. for the WTO, I think, to get outside of members just talking to each other, to create a setting in which they can engage more broadly and to hear what's on people's minds, the people who are actually engaged in Trey. So it was a very useful session. I think it was the biggest one so far. Certainly the largest U.S. business delegation and global business delegation. I thought that was quite useful. In terms of... What went on there, I think it's a bit of what's going on within the WTO itself. So lots of discussion about the U.S. and the U.S. role, U.S. ambition, but also looking more broadly at things like the MFN principle, Most Favored Nation. Huge discussion on that. Also, a lot of discussion about plurilaterals, which I thought was quite interesting to see. Of course, on imbalances, global imbalances, on non-market economies and some of the structural issues that we're seeing. The moratorium on the collection of duties on e-commerce transmissions, as well as the moratorium on the... work program on e-commerce for developing countries. That was discussed too. But I have to say to me, it was interesting six months after MC-14 that people weren't really talking about what happened at MC-14, except for the moratorium. And instead, we're focused on what comes, this sense that the WTO does need deep reform. We've seen a lot of... action within the WTO, or at least a lot of discussion within the WTO, on reform over the last six months. And I think there's really a sense that action needs to happen. And the last point I'd make is that the theme of the public forum was services. The discussions, though, in the formal panels as well as the closed-door meetings, was much broader than services to touch on some of these issues I mentioned. Speaker 3 (6:22) It's interesting that you characterize it as sort of an openness to the public, which I think is wonderful. And if it only happens once a year, that's a good start. I would say Geneva is one of these places where the bubble's pretty thick and lots of things go on. Recall Mark Twain's comment about Cincinnati, which is, I want to be there when the world ends because I'll have plenty of time. before they notice. So I always felt that when I came to Geneva. If anything really went off the rails, they'd find out about maybe six months later. It's good to know that there is some outside input. Was there any particular focus on wheel change? Or did you hear mostly the same subjects and topics that you've heard for, say, the last five years? Or was something novel, something new came up that you thought might help break the logjam? Speaker 1 (7:08) I think... that the discussions on the topics that I mentioned was pretty broad and far-reaching. And with that many people there and 130 panels going on, it's impossible to really absorb everything. But my observation is this. I was last at the WTO a year ago, so it had been a year for me. And it was interesting jumping right back into that to see how much the discussion has changed. So a topic like MFM, which had been sacrosanct a year ago, I mean, nobody really even thought about talking about it until the U.S. raised it in December last year, now suddenly is part of most discussions in a way that is, I would say, very forthright. I think there is a sense among members. that I talked to that there's no harm in talking. And in fact, as one said, it would be arrogant to say we got everything right 30 years ago. I thought that was pretty telling. There was also a sense that MFN already has many exceptions, so it's not dogmatic. It's not dogma. Adaptability is important. But at the same time, there were a lot of members, of course, who are very uncomfortable. about moving away from something like MFN. And the business community, I think, is a bit nervous about this too, that it may create less certainty. So I think that while there is a sense that MFN is still a fundamental principle, there was a lot of discussion about how to look at it. So looking at the purpose of MFN, for example, meant to curb preferences, but there already are many exceptions to it. I think there was really a lot of discussion about so many issues concerning MFN that it made me think a lot of members really aren't talking about MFN itself, but it's a proxy for other issues, everything that might ail the WTO. So whether it's economic structures, state-owned enterprises, massive state intervention, and in a inability to get at that issue because of MFN, or whether it's the lack of progressive liberalization that had been expected when the WTO came into being. Is it a question of the lack of compliance? Is it economic coercion, gaps in the rules, broader systemic challenges, all of these things that people talk about in the context