Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala reappointed as WTO chief, a heavy task in the face of Trump's return

Nigerian Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was reappointed by consensus for a second term as head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Friday, less than two months before Donald Trump returns to office, displaying his refusal to comply with the rules of international trade.

“WTO members today decided to entrust Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala with a second term as Director-General,” the Organization said in a statement after a closed-door meeting at its headquarters in Geneva.

The first woman and first African to lead the World Trade Organization, she was the only candidate to succeed her. At 70, she was re-elected by consensus, to applause, by the 166 members of the organization, for a second four-year term whose priority will be to prevent the world from sinking into protectionism.

Her first term ends at the end of August 2025, but the renewal procedure was brought forward at the request of African countries, officially to facilitate preparations for the next WTO ministerial conference in Cameroon in 2026.

The unstated objective is to “speed up the process because they didn't want Donald Trump's team to veto it like they did four years ago,” says former WTO spokesperson Keith Rockwell, a researcher at the Hinrich Foundation.

The CEO is traditionally appointed by consensus. Which allowed Donald Trump, in 2020, to block Ms Okonjo-Iweala's first candidacy, depriving the organization of a leader for months, until the Biden presidency.

– “Firefighter” –

The support given to her second term “is not so much” due to the fact “that everyone likes Ngozi”, comments a source close to the discussions, but that the countries feared that the Trump administration “would then slow things down”.

But this accelerated renewal “creates tensions in relations with the United States, that's for sure. Tensions that would probably have existed under any circumstances. But today, it raises the stakes”, comments Mr Rockwell.

Especially since the American president-elect has rekindled concerns about all-out trade wars, by threatening China, Canada and Mexico in particular to increase customs duties as soon as he comes to power in January. The billionaire had already triggered trade clashes with China and Europe during his first term (2017-2021).

“The festival of customs duties that he is now announcing shows that he does not intend to respect any rules. In fact, the United States would not need to withdraw from the WTO, they are freeing themselves from WTO rules, with a brutal decoupling from China,” observes Elvire Fabry, researcher at the European Jacques Delors Institute.

The WTO Director-General will have “a firefighter role” in this context, she believes.

– “Save what can be saved” –

It will be a matter of “saving what can be saved, and convincing people that there is not a huge alternative to WTO rules” but “it will be a very difficult mandate with little certainty about what will happen,” stresses another source close to the matter.

“We are living in a period where the application of WTO rules has deteriorated. But we cannot blame all of this on the United States,” stresses Keith Rockwell.

As explained by the director of the Geneva Trade Platform organization, Dmitry Grozoubinski, author of the book “Why Politicians Lie About Trade”, governments “are increasingly turning to trade measures to address issues such as national security, environmental competition and reindustrialization” while worrying less about whether “their ideas violate the spirit and letter of the rules of “If President-elect Trump makes destroying the WTO a priority,” the organization's options “will be limited because the institution is not designed to withstand demolition by its members,” he said.

When she arrived at the WTO, Okonjo-Iweala had already found a weakened organization. She tried to breathe new life into it around climate and health issues and managed to secure a major deal to ban harmful fisheries subsidies.

But pressure for WTO reform has grown, especially as the dispute settlement system’s appeals body, which the first Trump administration collapsed by blocking the appointment of judges, remains at a standstill, despite the goal of reviving it this year.

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