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The Future of the WTOIn the optimistic version of this scenario, which seems to be where the current trajectoryis leading us, the WTO remains one of several pillars of world trade governance.This sort of outcome is familiar from the EU’s three-pillar structure, where the firstpillar (basically the disciplines agreed in treaties up the 1992 Maastricht Treaty) wassupplemented by two new pillars to cover new areas of cooperation. 1 In the pessimisticversion of this first scenario, the lack of progress undermines political support and theWTO disciplines start to be widely flouted; the bicycle, so to speak, falls over whenforward motion halts.The second scenario involves a reinvigoration of the WTO’s centricity.2. The WTO engages in 21st century trade issues both by crafting new multilateral disciplines– or at least general guidelines – on matters such as investment assurancesand by multilateralising some of the new disciplines that have arisen in regionaltrade agreements.There are many variants of this future outlook. The engagement could take the formof plurilaterals – following the lead of agreements like the Information TechnologyAgreement, the Government Procurement Agreement and the like (where only a subsetof WTO members sign up to the disciplines). It could also take the form of an expansionof the Doha Round agenda to include some of the new issues that are now routinelyconsidered in regional trade agreements.In this short essay, I support these conjectures by first discussing why the GATT had somany wins while the WTO’s had so many woes, then explaining why 21st century tradeemerged and how it is different. Finally, I pull the threads together in the concludingsection.Note that I straightforwardly ignore many of the standard issues that crop up in essaysabout the WTO’s future: the rising number of WTO members and its consensus decision-1 The pillar structure was removed by the 2009 Lisbon Treaty but its effect was maintained Article by Article.123