The U. of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog is discussing "The Future of the WTO," with posts by Anu Bradford, Daniel Abebe, Greg Shaffer and Richard Steinberg.
Steinberg begins his post as follows: "As a location for trade negotiation, the WTO is dead." I'm going to be a bit contrarian here and predict that the proliferation of FTAs is in its final stages (its "last throes," one might say). We will soon (within a couple years) have some negotiating successes at the WTO and countries will then try to multilateralize all of the FTA trade liberalization at the WTO. Of course, this is no doubt just wishful thinking on my part!
