Your First Day as a WTO Delegate

From 2014 to 2017, I served as one of Australia’s representatives to the World Trade Organization, which was a huge honor but objectively a weird thing to do. Here’s a bit of what it was like…

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Though he’s too nice to admit it now, the first impression my manager at the Australian Mission to the World Trade Organization had of me was “complete moron”. Neither of us had left Canberra for Geneva yet, and I’d popped into his office to make a complete twat of myself. That wasn’t my plan obviously, but it’s important to be results driven.

You see, dear readers, I had a Master’s degree focused on trade and the WTO and therefore thought I “knew things.” My future boss on the other hand, a man called Andrew, was kindly taking a few minutes out from his job leading for Australia on huge chunks of the TPP to humor the cretin he’d have to handhold for three years. It did not go well.

Side note: Andrew went on to be Chief Negotiator for Australia on the free trade agreement with Peru, whereas I went on to post trade themed Dungeons and Dragons jokes on Twitter. So we’re both crushing it, is I guess what I’m saying

Top of our respective fields.

Right?

First Contact

Arriving at the World Trade Organization as a delegate is a singularly weird experience, because it is a bizarre job.

In the days and weeks leading up to it, you are most consumed with the chaos of moving your life to another country for three years. The person you’re replacing is utterly occupied trying to simultaneously do their day-job, plan their own next steps, and find the inner strength not to hate you for basically stealing their life.

The phone calls I had with my own predecessor focused on the vital questions:

Q: Do I need to buy a tuxedo?  
A: Only if I’m cool enough to get invited to the US Embassy Marine Corps Ball. It will surprise none of you to learn I was not.

Q: How can I get the Swiss staff at the Mission to like me?
A: Do not be a complete wanker.

Q: Doesn’t play to my strengths, what if that fails?
A: Bakery down the road sells cupcakes.

That’s pretty much it.

When you arrive you are given an exhaustive security demonstration of your Embassy, then handed your predecessors “hand-over notes” and pointed in the vague direction of the electronic filing system.  

You open the hand-over notes. These consist of the best efforts of an incredibly overworked and overstretched official attempting to condense years of hard lessons and internalized instincts into a few pages. The words “if you’re confused ask the Canadians,” might feature prominently.

My brains trust. Everyone’s brains trust.

You open the electronic filing system. It is extensive and incomprehensible. There are 140,000 e-mails just called “Re: Beef” in the agriculture folder, as well as a misfiled receipt for a vegetarian wrap from Istanbul airport. You stare blankly at your screen in ever-mounting horror while increasingly craving falafel.

Four minutes later someone pokes their head into your office and says, “shouldn’t you be at the WTO right now, I think of one of your meetings is in 10 minutes?”

You start running.

Getting Briefed

The WTO has a lot of different committees and meetings. Like, a lot. There are over committees and sub-committees reporting up to the WTO General Council alone, plus individual committees for every Accession Process, every Trade Policy Review and a myriad of other things. No WTO Mission has enough staff to cover them all without having one person juggling multiple jobs. When I arrived I received about six.

Obviously you can’t hope to be an expert on so many areas of policy, nor keep up with developments back in capital. That’s what briefings are for.

In the normal order of things, an upcoming meeting’s agenda is sent to every Mission in Geneva at least two weeks in advance. This is so you can send it back to capital and ask for instructions.

If you’re an experienced operator, this request will be a crisp, concise read-out of the political landscape, your forecast of major party positions, and your tactical recommendations on how to proceed. If you’re new it’s the agenda, the words “Plz halp,” and a forlorn kitten hanging from tree-branch meme your supervisor will insist you remove.

What you get back from capital will vary wildly.

On some issues, delegates receive detailed multi-page scripts, complete with pre-written rebuttals and the kind of hilarious one-liners you can only get by drafting jokes via a civil service committee process and then clearing them through three levels of management.

“Colleagues, I’m concerned we might be seen as ascribing motivations to the chicken’s journey without first clearing it through the Department of Agriculture.”

On other issues you might get a more general statement of where your country falls on the issue, perhaps with a list of absolute red lines you shouldn’t countenance. For Australia these included anything which might compromise our plant and animal health safety regime or make New Zealanders any smugger.

Finally, if you’re from a smaller country or just a more relaxed one, there are going to be issues on which your briefings are a general, “use your judgement but stick with the like-mindeds.” During my mostly pre-Trumpian time at the WTO this sometimes meant “wait until the Americans have stopped talking, then repeat what they said but try to be less of a jerk about it.”

It could also mean, “support the Canadians but less eloquently,” “agree with the Japanese but not in a way that invites follow up questions on the absurd level of legal detail they are armed with,” or “back the Norwegians except for the part where they offered to give someone money because we don’t have any.”

Whatever you get, that’s what you have. If you’re like me and in a mission 11 timezones away, the only people you can ask about it aren’t coming in to work for another 12 hours, so you take it and go.

Attending WTO Meetings

Armed with your instructions, you head on down to the WTO and pick up truly terrible coffee as you wait for the meetings to start. Arriving at the WTO for the first time is an intimidating experience. Formerly the headquarters of the International Labor Association, parts of the building still bare ‘glory of labor’ frescos depicting shirtless Adonises bearing hammers and bare-chested farm maidens with cornucopias of plenty. You know, typical trade negotiators.

I too have an idealized classic physique.

It’s also intimidating because everyone appears focused, confident and in possession of some clue as to what they’re doing. You are probably none of those things. If you’re anything like me, with a sartorial style best described as “black t-shirt with a dragon on it,” you also quickly notice everyone is also very stylish and seems to know how cufflinks work. You begin to speculate if they’re all better dancers than you are.

They are.

You go looking for your meeting room. The WTO, in its wisdom, spreads these across multiple buildings and floors, with a labelling system which somehow simultaneously accommodates rooms denominated by:

-          The first couple of letters of the alphabet

-          The last few letters of the alphabet

-          V1, V2, V3

-          CWR 1 and 2

-          Numerical codes 201, 301, 309

This is all as helpful and easy to navigate as it sounds.

When you do find your room, you scramble around, trying to find your seat. It takes several minutes before you realize the whole thing is in alphabetical order but the Argentinians have inexplicably brought six people and so hidden your country’s flag to make more room.

You glare at Jorge and quietly move your country’s nameplate into the holder where the Armenian one should be. In front of you is a microphone, a headset, and tiny squares of paper for scribbling notes to delegations next to you. I swear I’m not making that last one up.

International trade diplomacy is a complex beast.

The meeting commences. The Chair runs through each issue, typically inviting whichever government is inflicting it upon the rest (or as more professional delegates called it ‘added it to the agenda’) to introduce it before opening the floor for comments.

You furiously scribble notes. After the meeting, your capital is going to want to know what happened. They’ll be interested in what the major players said, who supported them and if there were any juicy fights.

At some point, when you really can’t avoid it any longer, you tentatively raise your country’s nameplate into a vertical position. This is the highly sophisticated, high technology way WTO delegates signal they’d like to say some words. A member of the WTO Secretariat, sitting next to the Chair, makes meaningful eye-contact with you and adds your name to a list.

You begin freaking the hell out.

The Chair gives you the floor.

You fumble with the microphone and nearly knock over your water. Thankfully it’s empty as you nervous-gulped it and that of every delegate within arm’s reach 30 seconds ago.

You lean forward unnecessarily close to the receiver and start saying words. It seems to be going well. You gain confidence. Your cadence settles. You begin adding inflection. Start throwing in a smile or two. You’re crushing this. You glance over at the Chair. They break in gently.

“The translators ask if you could speak a bit… well, a lot… more slowly, and remind you Hebrew is not one of the formal WTO languages. ”

Choked again, D-Rabbit.

It’s all pretty much uphill from there… except a brief moment five minutes later when the Chair tries to give you the floor again because you forgot to put your country plate back down.