Antecedentes da geoeconomia e ciclos de crise do sistema multilateral de comércio

Abstract

In view of the growing debates on the geoeconomics of international trade, this article analyzes the trajectory of the multilateral
trading system and its contemporary challenges. Based on a non-systematic review of the literature, four questions are discussed. The first addresses the political historiography of the modern international trade regime, pointing out how the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) resulted from a first crisis experience of the multilateral system established under GATT-1945, leading to a profound reform and the formation of the underpinnings of a new governance structure. The second question addresses the current exhaustion of these same foundations, by assessing the main disputes, obstacles and growing demands for reform of the
WTO system. The third part discusses the WTO crisis in the light of geoeconomics, highlighting the current position of international trade in the face of the collapse of multilateralism. Finally, the conclusions indicate that, in addition to the longstanding reform proposals, the profound transformations in global trade, combined with an increasingly contentious political environment, bring the WTO to its most critical moment since its creation. This scenario eventually brings the domain of international trade to the center of the debates about the decline of the Liberal International Order, characterized by global protectionist uprisings in the face of
growing Chinese competition, the institutional paralysis of the WTO, and the continuous demands for its reform.