A top European Commission trade official said that it's not reasonable to expect that countries can agree on reforms to dispute settlement that would satisfy the U.S. by November this year. So, Ignacio Garcia Bercero said, countries will need to set a goal of restoring the binding dispute settlement system for the 2023 ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization. “The WTO without binding dispute settlement is not the WTO,” Garcia Bercero said during a presentation online at the Peterson Institute for International Economics on March 19. “The continued escalation of conflicts if we don’t have a functioning dispute settlement system should be something we should all be worried about.”
A former World Trade Organization appellate body member and a longtime U.S. trade representative's environment advisory committee member agree that an attempt to create a carbon adjustment mechanism by the European Union is likely to violate trade law and support protectionist aims.
House Ways and Means Committee chief trade counsel Katherine Tai was confirmed by the Senate as U.S. trade representative on March 17, by a 98-0 vote. Politicians from both parties, trade skeptics and export-focused trade associations all hailed her promotion to the Biden administration Cabinet. She is the first woman of color to be USTR.
Ireland's Prime Minister Micheál Martin told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce audience that as the U.S. is looking for trusted partners to make sure its supply chains are resilient, it should look to Ireland. He noted that his country was the fifth-largest supplier of coronavirus-related goods.
Central American ambassadors and the Secretariat for Central American Economic Integration asked an audience to rediscover the region as a source of trusted supply chain partners and a way to achieve quicker deliveries with a lower carbon footprint.
The Senate approved House Ways and Means Chief Trade Counsel Katherine Tai to be the U.S. Trade Representative with no opposition. The Senate voted 98-0 in favor of the confirmation.
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will be meeting with some top Chinese officials March 18, but the trade war will not be front and center, he told reporters at a White House press conference March 12. A reporter asked what China would have to do for the U.S. to reduce or lift tariffs, or loosen export controls. “I don’t expect that, for example, the phase one trade deal is going to be a major topic of conversation next week,” Sullivan said; instead, it will be more about geopolitical issues and human rights, not details on tariffs and export controls. “But we will communicate that the United States is going to take steps, in terms of what we do on technology, to ensure that our technology is not being used in ways that are inimical to our values or adverse to our security. We will communicate that message at a broad level,” he said. He added that before the U.S. can begin negotiating on trade, there's more work to do with allies, “to come up with a common approach, a joint approach, before we go sit down point by point with the Chinese government on these issues.”
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is seeking comments on the complaint that Hong Kong has raised at the World Trade Organization by April 12. The territory of Hong Kong has said that the U.S. is breaking WTO rules by requiring that exporters mark goods from Hong Kong as Made in China, rather than Made in Hong Kong. The U.S. issued an executive order last year making the change because of China's political crackdown against Hong Kong. The marking rule does not affect tariff treatment (see 2008130028).
The European Union and U.S. have moved closer to each other's positions on World Trade Organization reform, panelists on a webinar agreed, but that's not to say it's going to be quick or easy to get the appellate body restarted.
Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, reintroduced a resolution that calls for revisions to the World Trade Organization while also affirming its usefulness. It is a repeat of a resolution introduced in 2020 (see 2007060004). “By identifying the problem and suggesting some potential solutions, this bipartisan resolution is a start to addressing and fixing some of the shortcomings of the WTO in order to support American workers against unfair foreign trade practices and enhance the ability of American farmers, workers, and businesses to access foreign markets,” Portman said in a news release announcing the March 9 introduction. Cardin said the U.S. must lead in maintaining rules-based systems, and reforms are needed for the WTO to succeed.