The status quo “has become economically unworkable and politically unacceptable”, Greer said in a video statement as the global trade body’s ministerial conference — its supreme decision-making body — kicked off in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde.
Yaounde marks the WTO’s first ministerial since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, unleashing a barrage of attacks on multilateralism and WTO rules with sweeping tariffs and bilateral trade deals.
Greer, who is in Yaounde for the conference, said Trump was restructuring the trading system to base it on “reciprocity, fairness, and balanced trade”.
“They are a response to the failure of multilateral institutions and negotiations to achieve fairness in terms of market access and a level playing field,” he said.
Greer said trade imbalances had damaged industries and their workforces, leading to “deindustrialisation, dependency, and despair”.
He said the “new order” would involve agreements between smaller groups of countries, rather than “wasting years and even decades to agree on a lowest-common denominator”.