The U.S. veto was based not on Chang’s lack of qualification, but on his decisions. This sets a highly dangerous precedent, which the U.S. may come to regret. In the future, any WTO member can follow the U.S. example and veto the reappointment of judges it considers inappropriate.
.. As the consensus principle applies in the organization, in effect giving every member state a veto, such behavior could, in a worst-case scenario, completely stall the dispute settlement system. Why is the U.S. taking such a risk by rocking the system?
.. One simple reason is that most of the disputes that the U.S. has been engaged in have concerned the EU and China — highly important trading partners that are not yet covered by bilateral trade agreements. China, the EU and the U.S. appear most frequently as parties to disputes at the WTO, indicating how heavily the largest economies in the world rely on the dispute settlement system.
.. Could it have been intended as an attempt to make such reappointments a political exercise, similar to the appointment of judges to the U.S. Supreme Court? If so, the U.S. has totally misjudged the difficulty of managing multilateral relations to reach political consensus. This seems unlikely.
Brexit Right
The U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union betrays a failure of empathy and imagination among its leaders. Will America’s political establishment fare any better?
Instead, they deploy slogans of the status quo: Remain, Stronger Together. These are intended as dark warnings of the costs of change, and intimations that those who vote for it are motivated solely by prejudice and ignorance.
And here is where the failure of imagination proved catastrophic for the established elites. They failed to paint a vision of a better, brighter future.
.. They audaciously gambled that by presenting a stark choice, an all-or-nothing vision of globalization, they could persuade their voters to go all in.
.. “Good on you for ignoring all the fear mongering from special interest globalists who tend to aim for that apocalyptic One World Government that dissolves a nation’s self-determination and sovereignty,” cheered Sarah Palin.
.. Will they display enough empathy to convince angry, hurting voters they understand their pain is real? Will they exercise enough imagination to offer a positive vision of the future, one that promises them that America’s greatness lies ahead, and not behind?
Britain just killed globalization as we know it
Native-born workers without college degrees are venting their frustrations with immigrants, with factory jobs outsourced abroad and with a growing sense of political helplessness — the idea that their leaders no longer respond to concerns of people like them.
.. University-educated voters in Britain overwhelmingly sided with the “remain” campaign in Thursday’s vote; those without college degrees powered the victory for “leave.” The top issue among those voting to go was Britain’s right to act independently. The second highest was immigration.
.. we can have any two of these three things, but never all three: democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration.
Boris Johnson, Britain’s Donald Trump, could become prime minister with ‘Brexit’ vote
The verbose, charmingly unkempt Johnson, 52, has been described as Britain’s Donald Trump; he’s stoked anti-immigrant hate and shown little regard for the truth during the “Brexit” campaign.
.. American Erik Bidenkap, who’s working in London, says the similarities between Trump’s presidential campaign in the U.S. and the “Brexit” campaign in the U.K. are stark. “In America, politicians are saying, ‘We’re losing to China, we’re losing to Mexico, they’re stealing our jobs,'” Bidenkap told NPR. “Here in Great Britain, same thing.
.. No one who’s followed Johnson’s career is surprised by his rhetoric. The former journalist has always had a tetchy relationship with the truth.
.. Johnson “has managed to use his disarranged, slightly comical hair as a helmet, shielding him from more serious scrutiny. It lets him come across as an unconventional politician…”