Japan and China agreed to enter into arbitration under the World Trade Organization's Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Agreement, an alternative to the Appellate Body, related to a spat over China's antidumping duties on stainless steel products from Japan. Submitting a notice of agreed procedures for arbitration, Japan and China said they will take to arbitration, given that there are less than three AB members.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai officially signed the instrument of acceptance of the World Trade Organization fisheries subsidies deal struck at the 12th Ministerial Conference. With the signing, the U.S. became the fourth WTO member, and first large fishing nation, to formally accept the deal. Two-thirds of WTO members must accept the deal for it to take effect.
Australia will pause its World Trade Organization case against China on barley for three months while Beijing reviews its restrictions, Australia announced this week. China placed 80.5% duties on Australian barley in 2020. The parties recently carried out "constructive dialogue at all levels," leading to a three- to four-month reprieve in the WTO case, Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said April 11.
The Philippines notified the World Trade Organization on April 4 that it began a preliminary safeguard investigation on liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) cylinders. The investigation was initiated after a request by the country’s LPG steel cylinder industry, which said increased imports of the cylinders “cause serious injury to the domestic industry,” including “declining market share, production, sales, capacity utilization, employment profitability, incurred losses, and existence of price depression and price undercutting.” Interested parties can comment on the investigation by making submissions to the Bureau of Import Services via bis_irmd@dti.gov.ph within five days of April 4.
World Trade Organization members were updated on dispute settlement system reform informal talks during the March 31 meeting of the Dispute Settlement Body, the WTO said. Guatemala's Deputy Permanent Representative to the WTO, Marco Molina he held over 40 bilateral meetings with delegates and regional coordinators representing over 130 WTO nations in February. "An online template was created" so that countries could submit proposals, and 70 have been received to date, the WTO said. Molina said a calendar of meetings up to the first week of July was created, and that members expect to include agreed-to solutions in a "green" table before the summer break, laying a foundation for drafting reform points once members return from the break and concluding at the end of the year.
World Trade Organization members elected New Zealand's Clare Kelly to serve as the new head of the Committee on Regional Trade Agreements. Members at the March 27 meeting also reviewed five existing trade agreements, looking at the EU-U.K. RTA on goods and services, the economic partnership agreement between Eastern and Southern Africa states and the U.K., and the U.K.-Japan comprehensive economic cooperation and partnership agreement; the India-Mauritius CEPA; and the Turkey-Serbia free trade deal, WTO said. The next meeting is set for July 3-4.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said her team is on "phase three" of its reform talks at the World Trade Organization, saying that phase brings in all WTO members. Tai, speaking during a March 24 House Ways and Means Committee hearing, said her team in Geneva is "bringing written proposals every meeting" with the goal of making "a more functional negotiating forum." The aim is to move WTO dispute settlement away from litigation and toward negotiation, Tai said. She also decried the WTO's recent rulings against the Section 232 national security tariff action, saying they "are deeply concerning to us and to our national security sovereignty."
World Trade Organization members recently adopted “a range of tools and recommendations” that the body said will improve implementation of the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures. Those recommendations were outlined in two documents adopted by the SPS Committee, including one, G/SPS/67, that lists “existing tools and resources to enhance the implementation” of the SPS agreement for SPS approval procedures for food, animal and plant products, and another, G/SPS/68, that provides recommendations on SPS approval procedures.
World Trade Organization members, during the first in a planned series of "Fish Weeks," laid out the foundation for an agreement on fisheries subsidies to be achieved by the next Ministerial Conference in February 2024, said Einar Gunnarsson, who chaired the March 20-24 talks. The talks were "very successful," Gunnarsson said. He said the next Fish Week, scheduled for April 25-28, will be the "beginning of our discussions of how to get to the result we want." Members also discussed that special and differential treatment will be "an integral part of the negotiations," the WTO said, and made a "general call" to safeguard the livelihood and food security of small fishers.
World Trade Organization members swapped information on existing e-commerce regulatory and legal frameworks during the March 22 meeting of the Work Programme on Electronic Commerce, the WTO said. Members also discussed how the WTO can help implement these frameworks and the challenges associated with establishing them. Singapore introduced its Digital Economy Agreements while the U.K. shared a paper on trade digitalization focused on "how to make legislative and regulatory frameworks on e-commerce more inclusive, transparent and efficient." The work program's next session, set for April 20, will focus on the moratorium on the imposition of e-commerce customs duties.