Starting this month, the 159 economies of the World Trade Organisation will begin the selection of a new director-general. Instead of the usual practice of a selection based on personality and nationality, the nine candidates for WTO chief need to answer questions of policy leadership.
Pascal Lamy, the current director-general, made every effort to complete the Doha round of global trade negotiations. But that deal, launched in 2001, has foundered on differences between developed economies and major emerging markets. As a result, the WTO is at risk of being pushed aside.
The action is shifting to other venues, with the announcement of a US-EU trade negotiation being just the most recent. The next DG needs to have a policy agenda to modernise trade multilateralism to meet new challenges. I urge that each candidate should be assessed by the substance of their answers to five questions, which are drawn from the work of Gary Hufbauer and Jeffrey Schott of the Peterson Institute.