World Trade Organization members agreed during the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Committee Nov. 9-11 meeting "on the process for undertaking the work programme" to address challenges on the implementation of the Agreement on the Application of SPS Measures, the WTO said. The member countries committed to working together on assessing the impact of emerging challenges and trade concerns in applying the agreement. Challenges included population growth, climate change, new technologies, innovation, and pest and disease pressures. In June, WTO members adopted the SPS Ministerial Declaration, which mandated the establishment of the work program and reporting of the program's findings at the 13th Ministerial Conference, set to be held some time between December and March.

World Trade Organization members mulled over five regional trade agreements at the Nov. 14 meeting of the Committee on Regional Trade Agreements, the WTO said. The agreements are between South Korea and Turkey, for services, and between Kenya and the U.K., the U.K. and Israel, the U.K. and Egypt, and the U.K. and Mexico, for goods.

World Trade Organization members informally met Nov. 10 to talk about revising the multilateral trade organization and expectations for how any changes can be carried out, the WTO said. Switzerland's ambassador to the WTO, Didier Chambovey, said that the talks were "constructive" and that more efforts would be made to "deliver meaningful WTO reforms" for all members. WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said she was "impressed by the level and seriousness of Members' engagement and the substantive exchanges."

Climate goals cannot be reached without taking into account the role of international trade, World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in a Nov. 8 speech at an event with world leaders at the COP27 climate summit. In her speech, Okonjo-Iweala marked the publication of the World Trade Report, which lays out paths for governments to use trade to support national action plans for grappling with climate change, the WTO said. Examples of this trade action include lowering trade barriers for environmental goods and services, boosting cooperation on carbon measurement and verification, and shifting the WTO's Aid-for-Trade initiative to an investment program that expands sustainable trade opportunities in developing nations.

Parties negotiating an agreement on investment facilitation for development (IFD) at the World Trade Organization "made substantial progress" toward settling remaining issues and achieving a single text, the WTO said of the Nov. 1-3 meetings. The participants showed support for the new and streamlined text following the Nov. 3 open-ended plenary meeting. South Korean Ambassador Jung Sung Park, the negotiations' co-coordinator, said four important parts of the text were moved from proposals in the annex to the body of the agreement.

There's a consensus on the need for reform at the World Trade Organization, according to Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for WTO and Multilateral Affairs Andrea Durkin, but since member countries have different ideas about what reform is, and different ideas about how to achieve it, it will be a "significant challenge" to make changes in Geneva.

The World Trade Organization on Nov. 1 opened the Trade Remedies Data Portal, a tool that will give access to information on WTO members' antidumping and countervailing duty actions, the WTO said. The portal will display the data via searchable tables and customizable graphs, and allow users to filter the data based on certain parameters. The portal has data on AD/CVD actions that led to the application of trade remedy measures in force on or after Jan. 1, 2020, with updates for information prior to 2020 expected next year. The portal was developed in conjuction with the WTO Secretariat's Open Trade Data Initiative.

Thirty-four World Trade Organization members have submitted 225 notifications pertaining to COVID-19 to the Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade, making up 46% of all COVID-19-related WTO notifications, the WTO Secretariat said in a note. These notifications primarily deal with the "extraordinary and temporary streamlining of certification and related procedures and the introduction of new regulatory requirements for medical goods in response to the pandemic." Most of the notifications, 68%, covered regulations on medical goods including personal protective equipment, pharmaceuticals and medical devices. The note said that since the TBT Committee's May 2020 meeting, WTO members referred to the pandemic in 54 trade concerns, most of which were not linked to COVID-19-related notifications or medical goods but the impacts of the pandemic on the members' economies.

World Trade Organization members are lagging in submitting required subsidy notifications, the chair of the WTO ComEighty-nine members still have yet to submit their 2021 subsidy notifications by the mid-2021 deadline, Kerrlene Wills of Guyana, the committee chair, said. Another 76 members have not yet submitted their 2019 subsidy notifications, and 65 have not submitted their 2017 notifications.

World Trade Organization members at the Oct. 24 meeting of the Committee on Safeguards reviewed 19 safeguard investigations taken by other members, the WTO said. Despite the dip in the number of new investigations and applications for new safeguards, WTO members took issue with "the way this instrument was used." China, Japan and Australia expressed concerns about the "timeliness of notifications, the effect of existing safeguard measures on trade, and the numerous extensions of measures," the WTO said.