As world leaders praised Sunday's long-awaited trade agreement between the European Union and the United States, one international institution was conspicuously absent from the conversation: the World Trade Organization. Once considered the crown jewel of post-war economic cooperation, the WTO was neither mentioned in the joint press statements nor acknowledged in the deal's architecture.
According to Reuters, the agreement was reached bilaterally between Washington and Brussels after months of high-stakes negotiations that excluded WTO channels entirely. No appeals were filed. No dispute panels convened. The world's largest and most complex trade relationship was renegotiated without a single nod to multilateral frameworks.
