Abstract As the United States turns its back on multilateral trade rules, a critical question emerges: can the WTO survive without its most powerful member? While the US remains the world’s largest single importer, it accounts for only 13 percent of global merchandise trade. Hence, WTO members retain substantial economic interests in preserving multilateral trade rules for the remaining 87 percent of global trade. The central challenge is preventing American unilateralism from becoming a contagious example, as occurred during the interwar period. WTO Plurilateral initiatives and extending the network of (WTO-compliant) trade agreements offer promising pathways to maintain the credibility and utility of the rules-based trading system without hegemonic leadership.
Baur et al. (2025) studied this question.