Following Donald Trump’s return to the White House, much attention has been given to his plans for tariffs on imported goods, deportations of illegal migrants, and cuts to federal government spending. Fewer column inches have addressed the implications of his presidency for global regulatory bodies.
Just as he did during his first term, Trump has announced the withdrawal of the US from the World Health Organization (WHO) and from the Paris climate accords.
And because his tariffs programme will challenge World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, Trump is likely to continue the US policy of stymieing the WTO’s appellate body, which adjudicates on trade disputes between states. US withdrawals from other international regulatory bodies are also possible.
Each of the bodies from which Trump withdrew last time around survived. However, threats to global regulatory bodies today could be greater than they were during Trump’s first term.
In the US and beyond, deglobalisation has so far been evident only in state policies, and not in trade flows. China, for example, has set up and now dominates several regional investment and trade organisations to provide alternatives to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
However, tariff retaliation and bloc-based regulatory standards could soon turn “slowbalisation” – a trend whereby political support for open trade has gradually weakened and the rate of growth in world trade has slowed – into trade deglobalisation.
Russian dolls depicting Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping on display in a gift shop in Moscow, Russia.
Yuri Kochetkov / EPA
We have been here before. The 1930s were characterised by high tariffs, breakup of trade into blocs, and withdrawals and expulsions of major powers from global bodies. In the 1940s, which saw the breakout of the second world war, trade was conducted almost exclusively among allies.
Yet almost all international regulatory bodies survived during this period, albeit they were bruised and were able to achieve less as a result.
Our study, which was published in 2021, distinguished pathways through which three distinct groups of global regulatory bodies either survived or else handed over their archives, networks and organisational capacity to their UN-era successors.
Preserving rule sets
One inter-war group of industry-specific global regulators oversaw capital-intensive and infrastructure-heavy international industries such as telecommunications and railways. This group included the International Telecommunications Union and a modest alphabet soup of closely cooperating railway bodies.
In these fields, interconnection depended on common but frequently updated and adjusted rule sets for technology, accounting and routing management. They also required continuous statistical collections by international bureaus.
Unable to agree major regulatory innovation after the global economic crisis began in 1931, these bodies reduced their focus to managing and maintaining their existing rule sets and information services.
On the outbreak of war in Europe, their bureaus went into a phase of severely reduced activity, with many of their activities suspended.