US trade chief Katherine Tai looks for incremental reform at WTO meeting
US Trade Representative Katherine Tai said on Wednesday that she is taking a “pragmatic” approach to the World Trade Organization’s next ministerial meeting, aiming for incremental but meaningful improvements that sustain the trade body’s reform momentum.
Tai told reporters ahead of the WTO’s 13th Ministerial Conference (MC13) in Abu Dhabi that she did not anticipate a massive reform agreement that addressed all of the institution's shortcomings at once. “We’re looking for success,” she said of the February 26-29 conference. “The Athena coming out of the brain of MC13, it’s not going to happen. So why would we set ourselves up for that?”
Instead, she said that during conversations with MC13's host, UAE Trade Minister Thani Al Zeyoudi, a prominent word was “pragmatic. And frankly, I think that, in the context of the global economy right now, that pragmatism is what is going to save us.”
The WTO faces a large number of difficult issues among its 166 members, including reforming its hobbled dispute settlement system, cutting fishing subsidies, resolving disagreements over agriculture subsidies, and deciding whether to extend a 25-year-old ban on duties on electronic commerce data transmissions.
Ministers from the WTO’s 166 member-states are due to meet at a time of growing trade restrictions driven by national security interests and heightened geopolitical tensions, including from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and US curbs on exports of high-technology items to China.
WTO ministers in 2022 agreed the body’s first reforms in years, clinching deals to ban fishery subsidies for over-fished stocks, and creating a partial intellectual property waiver to allow developing countries to produce COVID-19 vaccines.
Asked during a briefing what would make a successful
MC13, Tai responded: “It would be an MC13 that meaningfully builds on this reform program and an MC13 where people come away and they feel hopeful and determined, and smarter, about preparing for MC14.”
“It is incremental,” Tai added.
Ministers from across the globe are convening for a World Trade Organization meeting in Abu Dhabi between February 26-29 to try to broker deals, including on reforming its hobbled dispute system and cutting fish-ing subsidies.
The high-level meeting which takes place every two years, comes amid growing disregard for trade rules as the 29-year-old body grapples with global geopolitical problems and the risk of world trade breaking up.
The WTO is trying to finalize a package of reforms to address the way it adjudicates trade disputes. Its top court has been mothballed for four years due to US opposition to new judge appointments, leaving trade disputes worth billions of dollars unresolved.
A draft proposal is seen as the last chance for the WTO to fix the system but has yet to make any mention of how to reboot the court due to a lack of consensus, leading India and China to voice concerns.