MC14 was framed as the “reform” ministerial, but the core debate was whose interests those reforms would serve. At its heart, this debate reflects global economic competition, primarily the struggle between Western powers and a rising China.
Western proposals for WTO reform advocated for the selective denial of Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status and a shift away from consensus-based decision-making. From a developing country point of view, these structural anchors are vital. MFN prevents discrimination against less powerful nations, while consensus stops dominant powers from steamrolling the minority. Abandoning them risks regressing the global trading system into a power-based hierarchy.
Additionally, the US proposal sought to deny Special and Differential Treatment to large developing nations like India. By stripping away these flexibilities, the industrialized West was effectively pre-empting the industrial policies that developing countries need to grow, seeking to deny the policy advantages the industrialized West itself enjoyed for decades during their growth phase. While China is the overt target, the deeper goal is longer-term gatekeeping, thereby ensuring no other nation can replicate China’s rise or challenge Western dominance.
Ironically, China may welcome this transition. In a power-driven system stripped of rules-based safeguards, China is uniquely positioned to weaponise its supply chains and extract concessions, replacing a multilateral order with one dictated by raw economic leverage.
India’s principled defence
The US and EU proposals caused serious concern among developing countries in the run-up to the MC14. As was expected, there was significant pushback against these proposals. India played a key role in ensuring that the WTO reform pathway that emerges out of Yaoundé was open-ended and non-prescriptive, allowing for much greater debate on how WTO must reform itself.
While India was not alone in pushing back against the wider set of issues designed to undermine the level playing field for developing countries, there was one area where it found itself fighting a lone battle: on the issue of incorporation of the plurilateral agreement on investment facilitation for development or IFD.
The IFD challenge
While some developing countries did highlight the need to ensure that plurilateral agreements did not end up creating a fragmented system of global rules and argued in favour of some guardrails, no one was willing to oppose the incorporation of the plurilateral Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) agreement into the WTO system.
The proponents of IFD had strategically pushed it forward as an instrument of greater good and of interest to developing countries. Numerous studies and opinion pieces were marshalled to provide ‘evidence’ that the IFD would lead to significant increases in investment into developing countries. Any opposition to the IFD was therefore be painted as ‘anti-development’.
Indian policymakers viewed the IFD through a broader geopolitical lens. While agreeing that plurilaterals can advance niche rulemaking, India recognised they often serve as instruments of power play. By design, closed plurilaterals bypass Most Favoured Nation (MFN) principles and circumvent the consensus-based rulemaking central to the WTO, allowing a subset of members to set global norms without the “grand bargains” required by multilateralism.
Initiatives like the Global Forum for Excess Steel Capacity (GFSEC) illustrate the danger. Led by the EU, US, and Japan, GFSEC proposes common tariff and non-tariff measures in the steel sector that can distort trade and inhibit technology transfer to developing nations.
While initiatives like GFSEC exist outside the WTO today, lack of adequate guardrails will allow a multitude of such plurilaterals to become part of WTO discussions. This would paralyse the multilateral system by shifting focus away from genuine developmental interests and allow dominant powers to impose costs on those who resist lopsided norms. The US intent to pursue plurilateral rulemaking whether within or outside the WTO further underlines the systemic challenge confronting the global trading system.
Western powers may use plurilaterals to legitimise their industrial policies under environmental or security guises, while marginalising industrial policy programmes of developing nations. China could similarly exploit this power-oriented system to advance its own norm-setting ambitions.
Indian policymakers recognised a “toothless” and innocuous agreement like the IFD was being used as a strategic precedent to normalise the incorporation of plurilateral agreements into the WTO, precisely because it appears non-threatening and can be presented as a ‘global good’.
To prevent this erosion of transparent multilateral rulemaking, India resisted the IFD’s adoption at Yaoundé, insisting instead that the integration of such agreements be tied to comprehensive WTO reforms. Central to India’s position is the establishment of rigorous guardrails. Such potential guardrails include procedural due diligence to verify that a multilateral consensus is unattainable before authorising plurilateral tracks, alongside a requirement for a representative critical mass of participants from across the WTO’s diverse membership.
By standing firm despite tremendous diplomatic pressure and isolation, India shielded the multilateral system from fragmentation and unchecked power plays. This principled stance, while publicly solitary, earned private praise from several delegations who recognised the systemic risks at stake.
By linking the issue of incorporation of plurilateral agreements to procedural reforms ensuring adequate guardrails, India has ensured that future rulemaking remains transparent and inclusive, a position likely to be vindicated as the global trade architecture evolves.
The writer is Head, Centre for WTO Studies, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT). Views expressed are personal
Published on April 8, 2026