The WTO Isn’t Dead, but America Is Breaking It

Reform can’t happen if the U.S. keeps pretending it didn’t help cripple the institution it’s now eulogizing

Letter to The WSJ. 

"Jamieson Greer’s frustration with the World Trade Organization is understandable, but his op-ed ignores how the U.S. unwisely accelerated the organization’s decline (“Another Fish Story From the WTO,” April 8).

The American middle class has prospered in the era of open trade, and U.S. manufacturing job declines—driven mainly by productivity gains—long predate China’s WTO accession. The U.S. was the WTO’s chief architect and reaped significant economic and geopolitical value from the system. Its retreat, which began before the administration, ignored these realities and instead prioritized U.S. farm subsidies and trade remedies, often resisting the disciplines Washington demanded of others.

Fealty to these and other insular political issues stymied multilateral negotiations and motivated four separate U.S. administrations to neuter the WTO dispute settlement by blocking Appellate Body appointments. Washington’s participation in disputes has also ground to a halt. You can’t complain about the rules of the game after you stop playing and strangle the referee.

Worst of all, the U.S. has been a bad-faith abuser of the rules it helped write, blowing through tariff bindings and invoking narrow WTO exceptions for national security and balance-of-payments crises to maintain President Trump’s global tariff wall.

Mr. Greer is right to decry the WTO’s consensus problem and the abuse of certain rules by other WTO members. The institution does need reform. But members’ continued participation shows the institution isn’t dead. And reform can’t happen if the U.S. keeps pretending it didn’t help cripple the institution it’s now eulogizing.

Clark Packard and Scott Lincicome

Washington

Mr. Packard is a trade policy fellow and Mr. Lincicome is Vice President for Economics and Trade at the Cato Institute."

Dr. Makary and Mr. Hyde at the FDA

The agency kills a therapy for melanoma despite the evidence of progress against deadly tumors

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"Patients with metastatic melanoma who stop responding to other immunotherapies typically die in less than a year. In Replimune’s trial, tumors shrank in nearly all patients and vanished in one of six. About a third went into remission. FDA staff were so impressed by the results that the agency designated RP1 a “breakthrough therapy” in November 2024 to expedite its review."

"As we’ve reported, Dr. Prasad last summer overruled career staff to reject RP1. The agency’s main criticism was that its trial lacked a control arm, though this would be unethical in late-stage patients who failed to improve on other therapies."

"Start with the claim that the tumor-shrinking effects of RP1 could not be disentangled from that of another immunotherapy that patients were taking concurrently. But all patients had previously relapsed or failed to respond to other immunotherapies. RP1 is intended to help these refractory patients by boosting their response to other therapies."

"cancer in responding patients advanced after a median 30.6 months when they also got RP1, versus 4.4 months of being treated with other immunotherapies."

"The FDA implicitly concedes that the RP1 results are impressive by contriving ridiculous reasons to argue they could be exaggerated." 

Virginia Is for Higher Taxes—and Gerrymanders

Gov. Spanberger’s popularity takes a hit as she abandons the center

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"Unlike in private industry, collective bargaining in government isn’t adversarial. Public unions sit on both sides of the table since they fund the campaigns of the politicians with whom they “negotiate.” The incentive is to give away the store to union allies"

"Wisconsin Republicans in 2011 ended this cycle by limiting government collective bargaining, which has saved taxpayers some $35.6 billion, according to the MacIver Institute. Studies have also found that the law improved student test scores, in part by allowing schools to pay teachers more for performance."  

Los Angeles Schools Can’t Do Math

Teachers get a rich new union contract despite awful student results

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

The contract "increases salary scales by 11.65% over two years—double the rate of inflation—plus four weeks of paid parental leave and expanded student support services that will invariably require more hiring. Pay for new teachers will jump nearly 12% to $77,000."

"state per-pupil spending has soared in recent years to $27,418"

They will "have a workforce that is larger than when the district had 40% more students than we have today"

"the district and state are required to make payments equal to 30% of teacher salaries for their pensions. Teachers can retire at age 63 with a pension worth 85% of their final pay, plus free health benefits for life."

"Only 18% of Los Angeles eighth-graders scored proficient in math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, compared to 27% nationwide." 

The Truth About the Cuban Blackouts

By Mary Anastasia O’Grady. Excerpts:

"Blaming the U.S. embargo for Cuba’s economic disaster has lost its political firepower because the law has been watered down. Today Cuba can buy, with cash, all the food, medicine and construction materials it wants from the U.S. It can get lots of other stuff from the rest of the world."

"Cuba’s economic crisis is caused by a hard-currency shortage. Output from once-vibrant export industries like sugar, tobacco, coffee and fruit can’t even supply the domestic market. Barren agricultural fields are covered in weeds. Manufacturing is gone. Even tourism, which the regime has tried to hype since the 1990s, is in bad shape. Handouts from the Soviet Union, bilateral lenders and Venezuela, which kept the country afloat for decades, are no more."

"Even before January, . . . the monthly Cuban ration book supplied food for less than two weeks." 

"If not for remittances, families would suffer even greater privation." 

"he cause of the power failures is the antiquated grid which, . . . requires an investment of $8 billion to $10 billion over three to five years."

"new power plants have to be built because the existing ones sit on polluted land." 

Around 14% of Enrollees in ACA Plans Failed to Make Payments, Data Shows

Decline in January payments is driven by loss of federal Affordable Care Act subsidies

By Anna Wilde Mathews of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Normally, the rate of falloff in ACA plan membership early in the year is in the midsingle-digit range.

ACA enrollment was already declining."

"Many ACA policyholders saw their insurance bills mushroom after expanded federal subsidies that started during the pandemic lapsed at the start of January, when insurers were already implementing major rate hikes largely because of rising health costs."

"When health-insurance prices rise, younger, healthier people are more likely to drop coverage, leaving a greater proportion of sicker people who are costlier for insurers.

Among people who signed up with the same ACA insurers in 2026 that they had last year, Wakely data showed that those who made their initial premium payments were about 10% less healthy, based on an estimate of their expected healthcare costs, than those who didn’t pay their January bills.

When healthier people leave a market, insurers project higher average healthcare costs per enrollee and raise their premiums to cover them. That happened this year, when insurers made steep rate increases, but it couldn’t yet be determined if they correctly gauged the pattern—or if they will raise premiums again next year partly as a result of the ever-costlier pool of enrollees."

"some of the HealthCare.gov states saw rapid growth of low-income enrollees after the introduction of enhanced subsidies in 2021, with many on plans that didn’t require any premium payments. That expansion might now be melting away." 

The Growing State Tax and Jobs Divide

On April 15, see how job growth has changed in high- and low-tax states

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"progressive states . . . tax their rich and middle classes more. 

"small businesses . . .typically pay tax at their state’s individual rate."

"Eight states—Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming—have no income tax. On the other end of the spectrum are New York (top state and local individual rate 14.8%), Oregon (13.9%), California (13.3%), Hawaii (11%), Minnesota (10.85%), New Jersey (10.75%), Massachusetts (9%), Washington (9%) and Vermont (8.75%)."

"Private job growth outside of social assistance and healthcare—which rely heavily on government funds—has been paltry in these states since January 2020: Hawaii (-3.8%), Oregon (-3%), Vermont (-1.7%), Massachusetts (-1.4%), New York (-1.3%), California (-1.2%) and Minnesota (-1%)."

"stronger job growth in lower-tax states: Texas (10%), Florida (8.5%), North Carolina (7.9%), Arizona (7.3%), Tennessee (5.7%), Alabama (4.3%) and New Hampshire (1.6%)."