WTO needs progress on 'non-market' practices, dispute settlement -USTR's
Tai
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[September 23, 2023] By
David Lawder
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on Friday
called for meaningful progress in making changes to the World Trade
Organization by a ministerial meeting in February, with better tools
needed to handle China's "non-market" practices.
The U.S. was committed to a reformed WTO that was focused on its
"foundational goals," marked by "openness, transparency, and
fair-market-oriented competition", Tai said in remarks to a trade forum
in Washington.
She said that in recent years, the WTO has failed to address non-market
practices by some countries, seeking to "dominate key industrial
sectors, promote national champions and discriminate foreign
competitors, massively subsidize key sectors and manipulate cost
structures."
Her remarks did not name China directly, but she later said she was
referring to China.
"These practices are unfair and disadvantage workers in developed and
developing countries, like the very people this system should be
empowering and lifting up," Tai said at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies event.
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"Real conversations" were needed on how the WTO can address issues, Tai
said.
The 13th Ministerial Meeting of the WTO is scheduled for Feb. 26-29 in
Abu Dhabi. Tai called on the trade body's 164 member countries to "lock
in" any reforms where they can find consensus, "rather than continue to
preserve an unsatisfying status quo until some theoretical point in the
future where we agree on everything."
The WTO is a consensus-based organization where any member country can
block proposals, and negotiating rule changes has proven extremely
difficult since its 1995 founding.
But there had been progress such as a deal last year to cut billions of
dollars in harmful state fishery subsidies, which Tai cited as evidence
that differences could be bridged.
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![](../images/092323PIX/busine66.jpg)
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai testifies before a Senate
Finance Committee hearing on President Biden's trade policy agenda
on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., March 31, 2022.
REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
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WTO Director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, speaking at the same forum,
insisted that the trade body's members were working through tough
negotiation and said she was hoping for reform, including to the
dispute settlement system, by February.
"We have a lot of work ahead to deal with level playing field
issues, including trade distortions from industrial, agricultural
and other subsidies," Okonjo-Iweala said. "And we certainly need to
reform our dispute settlement system."
The United States has for years rendered the WTO's Appellate Body
inoperable by blocking the appointment of new judges, arguing that
the organization's dispute appeals process has overstepped its
mandate.
"The United States wants a WTO where dispute settlement is fair and
effective and supports a healthy balance of sovereignty, democracy,
and economic integration," Tai said.
She said the U.S. also wants a WTO "where all members embrace
transparency. Where we have better rules and tools to tackle
non-market policies and practices and to confront the climate crisis
and other pressing issues."
Tai has long pushed back against China's "non-market" economic and
trade practices from China, raising fresh objections to its
state-led approach during a late May meeting with Chinese Commerce
Minister Wang Wentao in Detroit. She also has long argued that China
has failed to embrace the market-oriented principles that it
committed to follow when it joined the WTO in 2001, and that the
trade body has been unable to counter China's subsidies and support
for state-owned enterprises.
(Reporting by David Lawder; editing by Grant McCool)
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