Xi Jinping’s call for international cooperation on AI signals that a new geopolitical contest is taking shape. For the Caribbean and wider Global South, access to AI is not enough. Meaningful participation requires ownership, institutional authority and influence over the rules without being confined to choosing between competing Chinese and American technological systems.

Some describe the WTO’s current struggles as institutional arthritis. This essay argues otherwise: institutions do not biologically age. The WTO is not simply failing to move but being redirected as state interests, economic power and geopolitical rivalries shift. Can the original bargain still hold, or are states already remaking global trade from within?