Jagdish Bhagwhati of Columbia University, one of the top free-trade economists in the world, was always a skeptic of the merit of the World Trade Organization, but he appears to have completely firmed up on the question, now calling the entire apparatus a “sham” that is working to regulate the third world, “the ultimate objective being the capture, reshaping and distortion of the WTO in the image of American lobbying interests.” [Thanks to Marginal Revolution, which links to Businesspundit, which cites the Nation, which cites the Financial Times.]
For those who do not remember the ancient history of the WTO’s passage, most free-trade economists naively favored it; the Mises Institute and its scholars warned that the WTO was a trojan horse (as was its failed predecessor, the ITO, which Misesians in the late 40s fought against.) See the great Mises.org WTO archive.
