A trade spat with India is threatening to push the World Trade Organization, already suffering from flagging credibility thanks to a lack of concrete results, into irrelevance. At the end of July, in a move that startled the WTO’s 160 members, India blocked a landmark international agreement that would have streamlined trade across the world. India had already approved the deal, which was struck at a WTO summit in Bali last December, but suddenly refused to live up to the deal’s first step -- signing a one-paragraph accession protocol -- without simultaneous progress on another matter -- food security, specifically greater concessions that would enable India to continue to subsidize its poor farmers.
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