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Axios reported on Friday that Trump wanted to leave the WTO, a
story dismissed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin as
"wrong" and "an exaggeration".
The website followed up on Sunday by publishing what it said was
a draft bill, the "United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff
Act", immediately drawing ridicule for legislation that would be
known by its acronym, the FART Act.
The act would allow Trump to ignore the WTO's "most favored
nation" principle, which stops countries trading on different
terms with different trading partners unless they have a formal
trade agreement, Axios said.
It would also allow "reciprocal tariffs", so Trump could impose
U.S. tariffs on particular goods equal to the tariff charged on
U.S. exports of those goods by another country.
The draft bill published by Axios did not mention the WTO, but
its report said the law would allow the United States to
disregard tariff limits agreed at the WTO since 1995.
Axios quoted a source familiar with the bill as saying the bill
was "insane" and Congress would never consent to it. Trump was
briefed on the draft in late May, Axios said, and most officials
thought it was unrealistic or unworkable, apart from Trump's
trade adviser Peter Navarro.
White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters told Axios that the
administration was not preparing to roll out such legislation.
Trump has caused a crisis in the WTO by blocking the appointment
of new trade judges, threatening to destroy the system of
binding dispute settlement. But many diplomats say quitting the
WTO would not be in the U.S. interest, and the WTO has said it
has never had any indication of Trump intending to leave.
U.S. officials in Geneva, home of the WTO, did not immediately
respond to a request for comment on Monday.
Simon Lester, associate director of the Trade Policy Center at
the Cato Institute, wrote on the International Economic Law and
Policy Blog that "I'm not taking this too seriously".
If the goal was to get lower tariffs for U.S. exports, Trump
could do that by negotiating trade agreements, he said.
(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Peter Graff)
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