The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Facilitator for WTO Reform Ambassador Petter Ølberg of Norway and the Hinrich Foundation jointly hosted an online roundtable with senior representatives from the private sector on 2 September.

The panel, held on the Chatham House Rule, was aimed at drawing feedback and insights from key businesses on how the WTO can reform itself and how the private sector can help.

Amb. Ølberg and the Foundation’s program director for trade research Chuin Wei Yap co-moderated the discussion among nine panelists that included Amazon Web Services, Google, Netflix, Siemens-Healthineers, Singapore Technologies Telemedia, UPS, Visa, Constellar Holdings, and the small-and-medium-sized enterprise Kinobi.

The WTO’s General Council appointed Amb. Ølberg, Norway’s envoy to the WTO, to the reform facilitator role in June as the multilateral trade institution’s leadership is moving to place WTO reform at the top of the agenda for the 14th WTO Ministerial Conference (MC14) to be held in Cameroon in March 2026.

The call for the institution’s reform is becoming increasingly urgent as the global rules-based order grapples with its most severe upheaval since its postwar inception in 1947. The Hinrich Foundation published a survey on WTO reform in April and another one on private-sector priorities for WTO reform in August. The survey respondents overwhelmingly indicate that they feel WTO reform is essential if global trade rules and the body’s decision-making system are to keep up with a new world of digital services, complex supply chains, and global trade challenges.

The panelists at the WTO-Hinrich Foundation online roundtable provided insight, feedback, and suggestions across private-sector priorities, including:

Digital trade as an essential rule-making priority. Panelists asked if, given chronic gridlock in WTO decision-making, such rules might first be introduced as guidelines rather than the full-fledged WTO law. One way might be through the use of codes, such as those adopted by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping, a panelist suggested.
Panelists highlighted the importance of the WTO moving forward to legalize the e-commerce plurilateral agreement currently in limbo at the organization as it remains blocked by a handful of WTO members. The WTO also should move onward toward a broader digital trade and services agreement, as well as enshrine open cross-border data flows.
The principles of non-discrimination and freedom of data localization and source code protection remain key to many panelists as AI increasingly dominates the digital trade agenda, panelists said. Some expressed worries about fragmentation in AI regulation globally and identified it as an area in urgent need of coordination in cross-border trade rule-making, emphasizing the need for a balanced approach in data policy and intellectual property. Bilateral or regional digital economy agreements could and should serve as templates that lead to multilateral rules, an area in which the WTO badly lags global tech developments, a panelist said.
As AI becomes increasingly important to trade facilitation and the administration of trade flows, the WTO should also work with bodies such as the International Trade Centre (ITC) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to enhance capacity-building among WTO members to prepare them for AI’s advent.
The current paralysis of decision-making at the WTO hamstrings the WTO’s ability to function and its credibility. The WTO’s practice of consensus – no WTO rule gets made unless none of its 166 members objects – should be modified to accommodate subsets of WTO members who are ready to move ahead on trade agreements, without being slowed or blocked by the full membership which may have a minority of countries that reject such plurilateral agreements.
The demands of transparency are becoming increasingly urgent and should be recognized at the national level. Panelists highlighted the need for the WTO to comprehensively compile and manage all trade-related measures, which could include non-tariff barriers and measures, as they are enacted globally. The WTO should catalog, identify, and call out such policies measures as they are being enacted, and point out their impact on trade, and not allow such measures to brew into legal disputes destined for the WTO’s defunct and contested dispute settlement system.
Regional offices could be set up by the WTO in key countries around the world, as a means to establish more institutionalized means of dialogue with the private sector and to draw closer issue-specific participation from businesses.
The WTO should consider including more consumer-facing businesses in its Business Advisory Group, which was set up in June 2023 and currently includes senior business leaders in financial services, the pharmaceutical industry, sustainable manufacturing, supply chain services, e-commerce, transaction advisory, and non-profits.
The WTO should do more to work with standards bodies to oversee greater harmonization of standards globally and raise its profile in demonstrating its value to individual and regional economies.
Greater efforts need to be taken to refine the national security provisions in the WTO’s governing Marrakesh Agreement. The WTO still represents value in bringing about economic reform and systemic change in countries that choose to accede to its membership, and the institution remains important to emphasize the value of the certainty that the WTO’s most-favoured-nation provision, which extends non-discrimination among WTO members, provides to businesses.

The panel was attended by a select audience of more than 60 high-level policymakers, business leaders, and academics.