India, US at odds over WTO reforms

A US-led push to reform the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) embattled dispute settlement system sparked divisions at a WTO meeting on Wednesday, with India accusing Washington of bringing the trade body to a “standstill.”

A working session on dispute settlement reform was held on the third day of the WTO’s 13th ministerial meeting (MC13) in Abu Dhabi, where little progress is expected on the issue amid major disagreements.

Washington, under former president Donald Trump, brought the system to a grinding halt in 2019 by blocking the appointment of new judges to the WTO’s appeals court, the organization’s highest dispute settlement authority.

Dispute settlement reform is a “hard issue,” but the dynamic in the negotiating room at MC13 is “constructive, it’s positive, it’s sober,” US Trade Representative Katherine Tai told reporters on Wednesday.

But “there is more work to do,” she added, following the working session.

During the last WTO ministerial in 2022, member states reached a commitment to having a fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system in place by 2024.

The overall outcome of MC13 could only reiterate this commitment, despite demands by some member states, including India, for stronger progress at the Abu Dhabi talks.

Tai said “convergence is happening” in various areas of dispute settlement reform.

But “there is another set of issues that are going to be harder and that are going to take longer to address, including what to do with the appeals mechanism and how to have a mechanism for review that doesn’t repeat the problems of the appellate body that came before it,” she said.

Washington has accused the appellate body of over-interpreting WTO rules, with Tai on Wednesday saying the now-defunct body was formerly more powerful than member states.

It was “extremely activist, extremely powerful, more powerful than even the members, where members could secure new rules through litigation and not have to rely on the very hard work of negotiating with each other,” she said.

‘Sense of urgency’

Washington’s push for reform has angered India, which accused the United States on Wednesday of bringing the WTO to a “standstill.”