Recalling the 1932 agreement, Obama says in the Washington Post: "The world has changed. The rules change with it. The United States and not China should write them". Obama buried the multilateralism of the WTO with his phrase and is ready to define the rules unilaterally. Perhaps it should be baptized an "imperial agreement" like the 1932 agreement. In any event it points to the weakness of multilateralism. The manner in which the negotiations were held points to the privatization of global governance. It was negotiated privately.