Trump’s unilateral imposition of reciprocal tariffs on scores of countries poses impending threat to the future of the rule-based multilateral global trading system under the WTO. What options do the WTO members have to salvage the organization? (Answer in 250 words)

- Trump’s unilateral imposition of reciprocal tariffs on scores of countries poses impending threat to the future of the rule-based multilateral global trading system under the WTO. What options do the WTO members have to salvage the organization? (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
Reciprocal tariffs imposed outside any WTO procedure attack the two rules the system rests on — most-favoured-nation treatment and bound tariff schedules. The organisation can be salvaged, but only by decoupling its survival from American participation.

Body
1. The nature of the breach: the April 2025 tariffs were unilateral, discriminatory and unbound, violating GATT Articles I and II, and they follow a decade of stretching the national security exception.
2. The pre-existing wound: the Appellate Body has been paralysed since December 2019 by the American block on appointments, so losing parties simply appeal into the void.
3. Option one, restore adjudication: expand the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement built under Article 25 of the DSU, now covering the EU, China and some fifty other members, and deliver the reformed system promised at MC13 in Abu Dhabi (2024).
4. Option two, prove the negotiating arm still works: the Fisheries Subsidies Agreement, concluded in 2022 and entering into force in 2025, is the counter-example to permanent deadlock, and MC14 is the forcing deadline.
5. Option three, address the grievances that drove the US out: self-designated developing status and special and differential treatment, and disciplines on industrial subsidies and state enterprises.
6. Option four, deliver what the South wants: a permanent solution on public stockholding for food security, India's core demand since the Bali peace clause of 2013.
7. Option five, restraint: members must refuse a retaliatory spiral, keeping instruments such as the EU's anti-coercion regulation as deterrents rather than weapons.

Conclusion
Regional and plurilateral agreements can preserve trade flows but not the MFN principle, so they are a hedge, not a cure. India's interest lies squarely with restoring the multilateral rule, which argues for joining the appeal arrangement it has so far avoided.