The Ledger · Far — twenty to thirty-five years

GP-22 The postwar institutions hollow out

Status: OPEN

From The Rational Prophet (Book Four of The Laws of Game Theory)

The bet

The bet: The share of world merchandise exports made by members that can still appeal a trade dispute, and the number of binding security-council resolutions, both fall below half their level at publication.
Win: Both fall below half.
Lose: Dispute settlement is restored, or binding capacity demonstrably increases.
Expiry: End of band, read each decade.
Check it: The WTO's annual merchandise export statistics, free on its WTO Stats portal, and the list of members party to the interim appeal arrangement; the UN Security Council's register of adopted resolutions.

In protocol form

Word for word from Appendix D of the book, the Prediction Protocol, where this bet is entered as The institutions. References to sections (§) are to that appendix.

Universe: the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations Security Council.
Source: the WTO's annual merchandise trade statistics, free and without registration on its WTO Stats portal (stats.wto.org), indicator Merchandise exports by product group – annual, in millions of US dollars, total merchandise; the published list of members party to the interim appeal arrangement; the Security Council's register of adopted resolutions.
Definitions: working dispute settlement means that a dispute can be appealed, either to a functioning Appellate Body or under the multi-party interim appeal arrangement (MPIA); the export share of appeal members is the combined merchandise exports of the WTO members that can appeal — every member while the Appellate Body functions, otherwise the members party to the arrangement at the reading — as a share of world merchandise exports, both for the same calendar year and from the same release, computed from the export statistics and the membership list rather than taken from any announced figure. The European Union is counted as its member states, each with its own exports, including those to other member states, because the world total is built the same way and each member state is party to the arrangement through the Union. Exports are used rather than trade between two parties because the free statistics do not publish trade by partner in this form. The measure is therefore the share of world merchandise exports originating in members that can appeal, not the share of trade a dispute over which could be appealed: an export from a party to a non-party counts, although a dispute between those two could not go to appeal. It tracks how much of world trade the appeal members carry, which is what bypass would erode; a binding resolution is one adopted under the enforcement chapter, Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.
Calculation: both series as a percentage of their level at publication. For the trade share, the level at publication is the share in the latest calendar year the portal publishes at publication, for the members party to the arrangement on the publication date. For the resolutions, the level at publication is the count for the last full calendar year before publication, 2025: forty-four adopted, twenty-four of them under Chapter VII. The bet compares a later full calendar year with that count.
Baseline: both series.

Baseline at publication

Reading date of record: 10 October 2026

What is recorded: Share of world merchandise exports originating in members party to a working appeal · binding resolutions per year
Value at publication: Merchandise exports of the members party to the interim appeal arrangement: 69.0% of world merchandise exports in 2025, the latest year on the WTO Stats portal (US$18,132,069 million of US$26,275,037 million), for the 35 parties on the WTO's list with the European Union counted as its 27 member states; Liechtenstein, which the portal does not report separately, is not counted · Appellate Body without members since 30 November 2020 · Security Council resolutions adopted in 2025: 44, of which 24 explicitly under Chapter VII (read 10 October 2026)

Author’s probability 30% that this bet scores HIT. Registered on 10 October 2026.

Sources

Not investment advice. The bet describes what the book expects to happen; nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold anything.

Last reviewed 10 October 2026