A World The WTO Was Not Designed For.

Trade policy was last substantially rewritten in 1994 with the establishment of the World Trade Organization. The world it was designed for — a unipolar U.S.-led system, China outside the agreement, supply chains that crossed two or three borders — is no longer the world the United States lives in. The proposals here update the architecture for contested supply chains: consolidating fragmented trade authorities (USTR, Commerce, State, Treasury) into a unified office with statutory clearance timelines, building domestic manufacturing resilience, and establishing enforceable partner standards — shifting from reactive emergency measures to proactive trade governance.