UK Trading with world under WTO rules

[brownfang]

Anyone else read The Economist and seen this article?
(I think you can register to read it for free).

So the gist of that commentary is that the USA is holding the WTO hostage (to Trumpian-USA interests), by refusing to get arbiters appointed. So the WTO may basically be heading for a snarled up paralyzed situation where they struggle to arbitrate anything between anybody for several years to come. You could still trade under WTO rules but you couldn't get any disputes resolved in a reasonable timeframe.

Out of the frying pan into the fire.

You can just set up your own arbitration. You just have to put a clause in your contract.

No such thing as WTO rules - you need to agree your own when you join - WTO members have already rejected what the EU/UK suggested re splitting their quotas.

Does "contract" = a trade deal treaty with each individual single country, or does contract = "some subset agreement made with the whole of the WTO"?

I'm studying international trade, so this is quite interesting. The last load so I had to do was particularly looking at international arbitration in the law section.

ItsAllGoingToBeFine seems to be saying that if UK went with WTO rules ("the no deal with EU scenario") that we'd have to enter a detailed set of negotiations about what our rules of trading would be under WTO.

Leavers always made it sound like there was a default set of WTO rules we could adhere to on day 1 of leaving EU, not that we had to do a whole set of negotiations with WTO about what those rules would be.