News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Wednesday, October 4, 2023
The summer 2023 capped off half a decade of a World Trade Organization wrangling with the rule-book’s national security exception. The process has landed the global trading order in a very uncomfortable place. It’s hard to see a way out unless the system accepts Washington’s zero-sum terms.
WTO ambassadors are to hold an informal ‘retreat’ in September to discuss whether the organisation should initiate multilateral negotiations to control subsidies to strategically important industries.
As the debate intensifies in Geneva over how to reform the WTO’s hamstrung dispute settlement process, the United States has made its own contribution, with a two-page communication sent to WTO members. The communication is largely a rehash of the arguments which the US has been advancing ever since its …
Here some of the latest news out of WTO headquarters in Geneva.
This week’s think tank publication highlights include another set of new pieces by the European Council on Foreign Relations and a think piece from the Peterson Economics for International Trade.
One of the fundamentals of the original GATT treaty of 1947 is equal treatment of imported products that are ‘like’ domestic products, regardless of how they are processed and produced. Recent developments in both EU and US law suggest the consensus around this principle has ended. It is time to …
The issue of WTO dispute settlement looks set to dominate the organisation’s ministerial conference next February. Delegations have embarked on an ambitious quest to reform the system, while the enormity of the task is becoming ever clearer.
Plans by Japan and China to go to arbitration under the alternative appeals mechanism MPIA in the World Trade Organization, announced last March, were quietly shelved as the panel report on a steel anti-dumping case brought by Tokyo was simply published on Monday.
It’s that time of the year when the OECD, the ‘rich-world think tank’ and occasional international treaty negotiation forum hosts its ministers in Paris. Overarching themes this year: supply chain resilience, sustainability, trade multilateralism Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific.
It’s been a busy week in Geneva!
