As WTO Members prepare for the 14th Ministerial Conference (MC14) in Cameroon this March, WITA International is hosting a new global webinar series: WTO Matters. The series explores the core functions of the WTO, reforms needed to keep the institution effective and relevant, and the key policy issues shaping debates.
At this session, we discussed the relevance of the WTO’s core principle of Most Favored Nation (MFN). While MFN remains essential for most of world trade, its critics, including the U.S., question its relevance. Panelists discussed the impact on MFN of the Trump tariffs; the negotiation of trade deals that do not apply broadly; the U.S. reform proposal rejecting a one-size-fits-all approach; and the EU reform proposal noting the need for dynamic adjustment of rights and commitments given lack of reciprocal liberalization.
Featured Speakers:
David Henig, UK Director, European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE)
Maria Pagan, former Deputy United States Trade Representative and US Ambassador to the WTO; and Former Deputy General Counsel, Office U.S. Trade Representative, among other position’s she has held.
Dawn Shackleford, President at Looking Glass Trade, LLC; former Executive Director for Trade Agreements Policy & Negotiations, Department of Commerce; former Assistant USTR for WTO & Multilateral Affairs
Alan Wolff, Senior Fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics ; former Deputy Director-General at the World Trade Organization
Moderator: Angela Ellard, Senior Advisor (non-resident), Center for Strategic and International Studies; former Deputy Director General, World Trade Organization
David Henig, UK Director, European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE)
David Henig is the UK Director of the Trade Policy Project for the European Centre for International Political Economy. A leading authority on the development of UK Trade Policy post Brexit, he places this in the context of developments in EU and global trade policy on which he also researches and writes.
David joined ECIPE in 2018 having worked on trade and investment issues for the UK Government for a number of years, in particular engaging extensively on US-EU talks around the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, on global issues around the US and China, and latterly helping to establish a UK trade policy capability after the 2016 Brexit referendum. He also writes a regular column for the online trade policy professionals news service Borderlex, advises a Parliamentary committee and the UK Trade and Business Commission, and appears regularly in media and at events to discuss latest developments. During the most intense phases of Brexit, he established with a number of other UK specialists a network of expertise under the UK Trade Forum banner.
Prior to working in Government, David worked in consulting and business development, having graduated from Oxford University. Collectively all of this experience is brought together in the project examining and evaluating the UK’s performance in preparing for and delivering effective trade policy.
Ambassador Maria Pagan, former Deputy United States Trade Representative and US Ambassador to the WTO; and Former Deputy General Counsel, Office U.S. Trade Representative, among other position’s she has held.
Maria L. Pagan is a Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She is an American attorney who served as the US Ambassador to the World Trade Organization in the Biden administration.
She also served as US Deputy Trade Representative. Pagan was formerly the Deputy General Counsel in the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), working on trade negotiations, agreements, and regulations.
From 1993 to 2003, Pagan was an attorney advisor in the Office of the Chief Counsel for International Commerce at the US Department of Commerce. She then joined the USTR where she provided legal counsel and litigated disputes before the World Trade Organization.
Pagan is a graduate from Tufts University and has a Juris Doctor and Masters of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.
Dawn Shackleford, President at Looking Glass Trade, LLC; former Executive Director for Trade Agreements Policy & Negotiations, Department of Commerce; former Assistant USTR for WTO & Multilateral Affairs
Dawn Shackleford is the President of Looking Glass Trade, LLC, providing strategic trade policy solutions for complex international trade challenges. She is a Director-at-Large on ANSI’s Board of Directors and a member of ANSI’s International Policy Advisory Group. Dawn was awarded the Association of Women in International Trade’s 2025 Government Service Award due to her long and distinguished career with the U.S. government, serving the United States and representing U.S. companies in the global trade space.
She served as the Executive Director for Trade Agreements Policy & Negotiations at the U.S. Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration from 2022 to 2025. In this capacity she oversaw Commerce Department engagement in multilateral trade institutions to help U.S. exporters, monitoring and import licensing of steel and aluminum trade to help U.S. importers and domestic industry, 232 related matters in cooperation with the Bureau of Industry & Security, and the facilitation of the U.S. Foreign Trade Zones program to bring jobs and manufacturing to the United States.
Prior to this position, Dawn served in various positions in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative from 2004 to 2022, including as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for the Office of Southeast Asia and the Pacific where she served as senior official for the Trade Pillar of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) negotiations, the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for WTO and Multilateral Affairs where she served as senior official for WTO, OECD, G20 and G7 engagement, and the Deputy Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for India, Nepal and Bhutan. She also served as the lead U.S. negotiator for the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, the customs and trade facilitation chapter of the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership Agreement, multiple WTO accession negotiations, and the government procurement chapters in the U.S. FTA negotiations with Oman and the United Arab Emirates. She also worked on various WTO, OECD, APEC, G20, and UN trade policy issues.
Ms. Shackleford was elected to an international leadership position as the first female chairperson of the Trade Committee of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) from 2020 to 2021.
From 1998 to 2004 Ms. Shackleford served as a policy analyst within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and in the Department of the Navy. From 2003 to 2005 she served as an adjunct professor at American University’s School of International Service.
She holds a Master of Arts Degree in International Affairs from American University in Washington, DC, a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Politics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and studied at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany.
Alan Wolff, Senior Fellow at Peterson Institute for International Economics; former Deputy Director-General at the World Trade Organization
Alan Wm. Wolff is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Before joining PIIE in 2021, he was deputy director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO). His research focuses on developing reforms of the WTO; responding to the role of the United States, the European Union, and China in the international trading system; and serving the needs of all countries in using trade to achieve economic prosperity. During his visiting fellowship at the Peterson Institute, along with numerous papers and essays, Wolff wrote a book on the future of the trading system, entitled Revitalizing the World Trading System (Cambridge University Press 2023). It was selected by the Financial Times as one of best books of 2023 in economics.
At the WTO, Wolff was responsible for divisions dealing with accessions, agriculture, trade and the environment, standards, translation, and information technology support. He is a founder of the Trade for Peace (T4P) Initiative, which joins the WTO, international financial institutions, and the peace community in their efforts to provide assistance to fragile and conflict-affected countries. He served as chair of the WTO’s Consultative Framework Mechanism for Cotton Development Assistance. During the six months ending on March 1, 2021, he was co-acting director-general of the WTO. His numerous writings on current trade topics during his tenure at the WTO are available at WTO.org.
Prior to joining the WTO Secretariat, Wolff was a leading member of the trade bar pioneering a team approach of combining economics, law, and forensic analysis to address problems in international competition. As a legal practitioner he has been engaged to resolve some of the largest international trade disputes on record. Prior to joining the WTO, he also served as the chairman of the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC). He has lectured on trade policy and related subjects at universities around the world.
Wolff served as United States deputy special representative for trade negotiations in the Carter administration and was general counsel of the office in the Ford administration. He served as acting head of the US delegation during the Tokyo Round of Multilateral Trade Negotiations and was a principal draftsman of the basic US law creating a mandate for trade negotiations. As deputy USTR he was a founder of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Steel Committee and its first chairman. He has served as a senior trade negotiator in, and advisor to, both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Prior to his service at USTR, he served in the US Treasury as staff attorney for the National Advisory Committee on International Monetary and Financial Policy, participating in the work of the OECD Development Assistance Committee, reviewing lending policies in the IMF and the World Bank, and participating in the drafting of the Articles of Agreement of the African Development Fund. He was director of the Treasury’s Office of Multilateral Trade Negotiations.
He is also a lifetime national associate of the National Academies, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and served on the E15 Initiative’s Experts Group on Trade and Innovation.
He holds a JD degree from Columbia University and an AB degree from Harvard College.
Moderator: Angela Ellard, Senior Advisor (non-resident), Center for Strategic and International Studies; former Deputy Director General, World Trade Organization
Angela Paolini Ellard is renowned for her expertise in trade and international economic policy, resolving trade barriers, negotiating outcomes, and building coalitions.
She is Senior Fellow (non-resident) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC.
Ms. Ellard served as Deputy Director-General of the World Trade Organization from June 2021 to August 2025. During her tenure, she was responsible for dispute settlement/reform, trade remedies, market access/trade facilitation, and negotiations to curb harmful fisheries subsidies. As a diplomat and key member of the senior leadership team, she supervised the Secretariat’s facilitation of the successful conclusion and entry into force of the Fisheries Subsidies Agreement. She also oversaw the WTO budget and financial operations, providing transparency and accountability as well as sound fiscal management.
Previously, Ms. Ellard had a distinguished 26-year career as Majority and Minority Chief Trade Counsel in the U.S. Congress. She achieved significant bipartisan trade policy outcomes with Congressional leaders and five Presidential administrations, including trade agreement negotiation and implementation, development programs, and U.S. trade and customs laws. Before her tenure on the Hill, she practiced law at major U.S.law firms, focusing on trade litigation, policy, and legislation.
She earned her J.D. cum laude/Tulane Law School, M.A. in Public Policy/Tulane University, and B.A. summa cum laude/Tulane’s Newcomb College.
She speaks and lectures worldwide and has received numerous awards for her leadership and contributions to trade law and policy.
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