The World Trade Organization: Contemporary Challenges and Possibilities

The Ateneo Law and Liberty Circle is proud to present a talk on the all-important topic of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on 8 November 2024, at 10:30 am to 12 nn, B1 Auditorium, Ateneo Law School, Rockwell Center, Makati City. The guest speaker is no less than Ambassador Manuel Antonio J Teehankee, the Permanent Representative of the Philippines to the WTO.

In 1997, in Tañada v. Angara, the Supreme Court described the WTO and the decision of the Philippines to join it in these words:

Notwithstanding objections against possible limitations on national sovereignty, the WTO remains as the only viable structure for multilateral trading and the veritable forum for the development of international trade law. The alternative to WTO is isolation, stagnation, if not economic self-destruction. Duly enriched with original membership, keenly aware of the advantages and disadvantages of globalization with its on-line experience, and endowed with a vision of the future, the Philippines now straddles the crossroads of an international strategy for economic prosperity and stability in the new millennium. Let the people, through their duly authorized elected officers, make their free choice.

Has the WTO lived up to its promise? A quarter of a century after Tañada, Ambassador Teehankee will give his thoughts on the WTO’s contemporary challenges and its possibilities.