In 1998, world leaders from Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela to Bill Clinton and Tony Blair met to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the multilateral trading system. Now, trade agreements are being rejected by political leaders in some industrialised countries and economic nationalism is resurgent.

The public and private sectors in this region need to unite to defend the system that has underpinned its growth. In fact, the problems of the older industrialised economies have more to do with a failure to adjust to deindustrialisation.

… Evan Rogerson is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Multilateralism Studies (CMS), S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University. He is the former director of the Agriculture and Commodities Division of the WTO Secretariat, Geneva.