Overly snarky post. I apologize to Bob.
Your comments -- damn the WTO and full steam ahead -- echo sentiments which are widely admired in some libertarian sectors of the US body politic. I shouldn't mock... to be honest, Python was on my mind as I wrote -- "Shhh! It's satire!" "No it's not, it's zany madcap humour!"
Re-reading, the zany humor part failed completely and the intended satire is snarky.
Some history, though.
The US joined the WTO in 1995. From the WTO's website: "The approval of the WTO required entire sections of US laws to be rewritten to conform with the WTO rules, similar to the way that treaties often redefine how the US will interact with other states. Had the agreement been voted on as a treaty, requiring a two-thirds majority in the Senate, it would have been defeated.”
That said, five years later, in 2000, a narrowly Republican Congress voted on a resolution to leave the WTO. The vote failed by an epic margin: 363 nay to 56 yea. So, five years in, lawmakers' consensus was that the US really needed to stay in the WTO.
And five years after that, the Cato Institute -- a libertarian, limited-government think-tank, not exactly a liberal tub of jello -- had this to say about the WTO:
"A global rule of law for trade is one of the huge advantages we enjoy today compared with the 1930s, when the race to raise trade barriers was unchecked by either economic sense or international agreements. ... Trade agreements have provided a rule of law for trade relations rather than the beggar-thy-neighbor rule of the jungle that prevailed so disastrously in the 1930s." Linky
OK, what about now? Again, the Cato Institute, this time from the Wall Street Journal, July, 2018:
"But let’s say Mr. Trump managed to get his way and pull the U.S. out of the WTO. The consequences for the world and U.S. economies would be immense. Among them: diminished trade growth, costly market and supply-chain disruptions, and the destruction of jobs and profits, especially in import- and export-dependent U.S. industries. The resulting trade barriers would compel some American companies either to downsize or move offshore." Linky
All this sums up the point I should have made, albeit respectfully: Trade agreements, even filtered through the bureaucracy of organizations like the WTO, are generally not just beneficial but, in the 21st Century, necessary to any developed economy.