Harmful Trade Policies Spread Amid WTO Paralysis: Supply Lines

The former head of the World Trade Organization, Roberto Azevedo, once warned that if nations continued to disregard international rules for trade, the global economy would return to “the law of the jungle.”

Five years later, the global economy is edging closer to survival-of-the-fittest mode as the top economies skirt the post-World War II system of trade rules in favor of a more restrictive and transactional approach to cross-border commerce.

President Joe Biden has maintained his predecessor’s WTO-illegal tariffs on steel, aluminum and about $200 billion worth of Chinese imports. Biden has also maintained his predecessor’s paralysis of the WTO ...