Steve Charnovitz
2 February 2020
I was saddened to hear of the recent passing of Mike Moore, the WTO's 3rd Director General. Moore was a great statesman of New Zealand and served briefly as its Prime Minister. In the trade community, Moore is remembered for his hard work in strengthening the WTO as an institution and in improving its external transparency. He helped to bring China and many other countries into the WTO to make the WTO truly a world organization. Many of these ideas about the WTO and world trade found their way into his 2003 book A World Without Walls. Moore was a key craftsman in achieving what seemed at the time as a high point for the WTO, the launch of the Doha Round as a multilateral trade round that would focus its benefits on developing countries. Sadly, the vision of helping the developing countries through trade did not gain much traction among the rent-seeking special interests that determine trade policy in many countries (like the United States).
