{
  "id": 15585530,
  "title": "Preserve And Reform The WTO For Free And Fair Air Global Trade",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/19/preserve-and-reform-the-wto-for-free-and-fair-air-global-trade",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-10-19T08:33:14.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Free Press Journal",
    "slug": "free-press-journal",
    "url": "https://www.freepressjournal.in/business/preserve-and-reform-the-wto-for-free-and-fair-air-global-trade"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "India is urging urgent reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to preserve free, fair, and inclusive global trade. The current state of the trading system is marked by rising protectionism, unilateral measures, subsidies, regional trade blocs, and climate-related barriers. The WTO's dispute settlement mechanism has also weakened due to the ongoing impasse over the Appellate Body. This could pave the way for a power-based system that would harm developing nations like India.\n\nThe WTO has a vital role in maintaining stability, predictability, and transparency in global trade, allowing developing countries to participate under a rules-based framework. India sees it as in its strategic and economic interest to support efforts to preserve and strengthen the WTO through balanced and consensus-based reforms.\n\nAt the G20 Trade Ministers' Meeting in Milwaukee, India's Commerce and Industry Minister, Piyush Goyal, emphasized the need to address trade distortions through WTO-consistent instruments. He cautioned against bypassing WTO rules or shifting adjustment burdens onto developing countries.\n\nDuring the BRICS Summit in New Delhi, the member nations reaffirmed their support for reforming the WTO while preserving foundational principles such as most-favoured-nation treatment and special and differential treatment for developing members. India may advocate for several priorities at the WTO:\n\n1. Restoring a credible and time-bound dispute settlement mechanism with procedural reforms.\n2. Strengthening the WTO's development orientation by enhancing Special and Differential Treatment provisions and securing a permanent solution for public stockholding for food security.\n3. Reforming agriculture subsidy rules to address imbalances and provide policy space for developing countries.\n4. Developing new disciplines on industrial subsidies while preserving policy space for development-oriented subsidies.\n5. Creating multilateral frameworks to regulate unilateral trade measures taken for national security or environmental reasons.\n6. Ensuring plurilateral agreements remain inclusive within the WTO framework.\n7. Strengthening institutional capacity and decision-making processes within the WTO.\n\nTo achieve these reforms, India could adopt a proactive strategy. This includes building a coalition with groups like the G-33, African Group, and ASEAN, working with major economies like the EU, Japan, and others on dispute settlement reforms, proposing a balanced framework for industrial subsidies, adopting a constructive engagement approach on new issues such as investment facilitation, digital trade, and climate-related trade measures, and advocating for institutional reforms within the WTO.",
  "summary": "India calls for urgent WTO reforms to protect fair global trade, restore dispute settlement, safeguard developing nations and strengthen a rules-based multilateral trading system. WTO Reforms, India Trade Policy, Global Trade In view of the current state of the global trading system, there is an urgent need to preserve and reform the World Trade Organization (WTO) to ensure that the multilateral…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}