let me say that again a new chief for the world trade organization um is poised to become the first woman and african to occupy the post a finance minister in nigeria and top world bank economist with a reputation for shaking things up she now faces her biggest challenge yet in international trade building bridges between adversaries and bringing a fresh approach to a struggling organization with me now is wto reporter bryce bashik in geneva thank you very much bryce so okanjo uela poised to take the top job what is she bringing to the table negozio condro
awala is an excellent pick to lead the world trade organization the 66 year old nigerian is a developmental economist who was educated at harvard university in the 70s and earned her graduate degree in economics from the massachusetts institute of technology she then spent 25 years at the world bank where she rose to the second highest position and served two stints as nigeria's finance minister uh her term uh as finance minister was generally considered to be positive she helped negotiate a 2005 deal to write down uh 18 billion dollars worth of nigerian debt to the paris
club she is also an american citizen who has lived in the dc area for most of her life now and um will be the first woman the first african and the first u.s citizen to lead the world trade organization most recently she has been the chair of gavi the global alliance for vaccines and immunization and this experience will help provide her with a unique perspective on how the wto can address the pandemic so bryce the wto in recent years has become dysfunctional in a number of areas could you take us through some of those key
issues and then perhaps give us some insight into what her approach is to resolve these well the wto does three primary uh things it helps nations negotiate trade deals it helps them monitor those trade deals and third it helps them settle any disputes that they may have so over the past 25 years wto has actually had a poor history of negotiating trade deals it has uh one trade facilitation agreement its dispute settlement function was paralyzed in 2019 by the trump administration who felt that it was not working properly so the organization itself is now kind
of in a holding pattern and uh most trade ministers around the world believe it needs to be reformed negozio con joy walla has campaigned as her experience as a strong reformer in nigeria and she wants to bring together nations to come up with areas of common agreement so that they can move forward with new trade uh negotiations and making the organization fit uh to govern the 21st century uh global trading system now a word of caution here the director general broadly doesn't have as much power as say president or a prime minister her job is
to facilitate meetings to set agendas to speak to the press and occasionally to help uh mediate disputes that said uh she plans to play a stronger role than uh director generals in the past and uh to try to bring this organization uh back to its feet the united states under trump was the only country to veto her appointment to the top job and we also know that u.s relations with the wto in general have been strained for several years so how significant is the change of guard in the united states now for the wto so
so the trump administration uh there was did not really like the wto president donald trump believed that china's accession to the wto in 2001 helped china rise at the expense of countries like the united states who saw their manufacturing capabilities hollowed out as jobs were shipped overseas donald trump even went so far as to say that the wto was the worst agreement the u.s had ever signed his administration through various policies crippled the wto and uh most recently blocked the appointment of uh negozio conjoiwala to be director general now the biden administration has taken a
different approach uh president joe biden believes that multilateralism can be a helpful tool for the united states and the rest of the world's nations to confront global challenges as a result the bible administration that's on friday has agreed to endorse okonjiwawa's appointment as director general and is committed to help reform the organization as a much needed step towards making it fit to govern the 21st century global trading system
