Despite consistent criticisms over its operations down the years, Russia still finds it difficult to leave the World Trade Organization (WTO) and is instead assessing the opportunities and broad benefits of membership. The WTO is not just an organization but a multilateral bridge for strategic trade engagement and securing results-oriented partnerships. Certainly, unlocking and accelerating trade initiatives should be the key focus in the changing world.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk underscored the importance of the work of the WTO, which regulates global trade, and further suggested optimizing its operations. Some experts believe the WTO has effectively been paralyzed due to conditions created by the current geopolitical shifts from United States power dominance and its tariff policy to the emerging multipolar architecture.

In his view, this reason is driving the current changes as well as “the desire of specific countries, business groups, and companies to establish control, including over deposits of critical minerals, and new transport and logistics routes that ensure the delivery of resources and goods necessary for the functioning of economies.”

“Because whoever succeeds in doing this will secure a leadership position in the world with a new socio-economic order and, consequently, will create better conditions for the emergence of new enterprises, new jobs, new sources of income for individuals and legal entities, new sources of budget revenue, and, ultimately, of course, a better standard of living for their own population,” Overchuk said at the forum “Architecture of the Future: Russian Business in Key Multilateral Platforms.”

In his opinion, sanctions, tariffs, and non-tariff restrictions are playing an increasingly important role in international economic........

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