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In trade’s ‘law of the jungle’, the winners are clear

It is China and the US that prosper when power sets the terms for global commerce

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    • It is a world where the founding principles of the WTO, which were based on equal treatment and protection for the less powerful, are visibly ebbing away.
    • It is a world where the founding principles of the WTO, which were based on equal treatment and protection for the less powerful, are visibly ebbing away. PHOTO: REUTERS

    Peter Foster

    Published Tue, Mar 31, 2026 · 06:00 PM

    BASED on one account of his early career, China’s Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao started out as the general manager of a photocopier sales department, before ascending the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party. 

    This week, in the Cameroonian capital of Yaounde, where the 166-member World Trade Organization (WTO) gathered, he was selling something altogether more nebulous: a plea for stability in a fracturing world.

    At a time when US President Donald Trump is riding roughshod over the multilateral trading system, spraying tariffs in all directions, Wang warned delegates that “without WTO rules, global trade would return to the ‘law of the jungle’ where might makes right”.

    United StatesChinaWorld Trade OrganisationGlobal tradegeoeconomics

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