First, a transcript of a White House briefing, including:
• The size of the tariff quotas—still to be announced
• The start of talks on a deal focusing on carbon intensity in the metals
• Avoiding Chinese content in EU steel—“melt-and-pour”
• Yes WTO agreements are fundamentally political in the sense that trade policy is fundamentally political. What matters is the direction of the politics (unilateral? multilateral? something else?)
“In any event, a recalibration of our approach to trade is underway,” he says
But the system isn’t only about freer trade. It’s also about rules-based trade policies. So a separate question: does this move weaken or strengthen multilateralism?
• Market access—nothing on tariff cuts, only transparency on applied tariffs (rates actually applied, at or below legally bound rates in the WTO)
• Export restrictions—notifications, exempting World Food Programme purchases from restrictions
Cooperation on trade remedies (duties to countervail subsidies, anti-dumping actions, safeguard tariffs), customs, monitoring, and responses to “non-market excess capacity”.
2. PROPOSED GLOBAL ARRANGEMENT to “restore market-oriented conditions”
• Others can join
• In 2 years
• Bring into international forums
• Limit market access for non-market-oriented/carbon-intense exporters
• Discipline, coordinate own policies
@BobWolfeSPS and I remain sceptical that the Ministerial Conference will deliver much of significance out of the broad range of critical problems confronting the @wto
Russia’s trade policy review—Day 1, Oct 27. Day 2: today.
These are periodic peer-review sessions (every 5 years for Russia), based on reports from the @wto Secretariat (factual) and the government being reviewed.
Comments Day 1: > 40 members + 1 observer (Serbia)
Briefly:
POSITIVE—Russia is constructive in @wto and for the coming Ministerial Conference
NEGATIVE—Import substitution policies, the role of the state in Russian economy
2/15
US: recognises steps taken in @wto, but concerns about turning inward, contrary to the principles—non-discrimination, predictability, transparency, fair competition, under import substitution and forced localization.
Includes investment, IT, SPS, government procurement
Quite a long thread on the China’s public response to its @wto Trade Policy Review
Lots of detail including: 1. comments covered by WTO rules: China will take seriously and fulfill them, 2. comments beyond WTO rules: unfair, unreasonable, and unacceptable for China.
Here are two threads from @fbermingham on some of the comments members made and China’s response, inside the @wto trade policy review of China, on days 1 and 2.
3. The on-going friction over negotiations in a sub-group of only part of the membership (“#plurilateral” talks, officially “joint-statement initiatives”, JSIs, seen as a way to progress when the membership is deadlocked) versus objections.