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Fisheries subsidies draft published for WTO Ministerial Conference

But with many issues unresolved, the chair says officials will continue to work on it before and during the Abu Dhabi conference

UPDATE: On April 12, 2024, chair Einar Gunnarsson circulated a copy of an “advance draft” as emailed to ministers in the early hours of March 1, 2024, close to the end of the Abu Dhabi Ministerial Conference. His accompanying explanation includes a detailed account of what happened at the conference.

Paragraphs 56 to 59 of the chair’s explanation describe further convergence after that draft was circulated, although some issues remained unsettled. It was the further revisions that Fiji and Vanuatu wanted discussed in the final plenary sessions at the conference, sparking a furious outburst of objections from India’s Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal. As Gunnarsson says, work will continue.

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED FEBRUARY 19, 2024 | UPDATED APRIL 13, 2024

The fisheries subsidies draft for the World Trade Organization’s February 26–29, 2024 Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi was published on February 16 along with a detailed explanation by the chair, Ambassador Einar Gunnarsson of Iceland.

“All members are very aware that next week, the eyes of the world will be on us,” Gunnarsson told journalists on February 19. (His full statement is here.)

“I believe that we have every possibility to deliver a meaningful outcome and bring these very long-running fisheries subsidies negotiations to a close at last. I will do everything in my power to help that chance become a reality.”

Achieving that is not guaranteed, and work continues in the final days before the conference to resolve at least some of the remaining differences.

(The draft and the explanation are presented side by side here.)

No agreement on India’s call for WTO ministers to discuss COVID-19 waiver

Many delegations argued that ministers meeting online would not be able to break the deadlock

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED JANUARY 10, 2022 | UPDATED JANUARY 11, 2022

India’s call for an online WTO ministerial meeting to discuss the proposed intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 fell well short of consensus at an informal General Council meeting today (January 10, 2022).

Many delegations countering that members would have to be much closer to agreement on the proposed waiver before a meeting of ministers would be able to contribute to a solution, said sources familiar with today’s discussion of just over two hours.

A bit of bother down at the WTO court — Why? And is it a killer? Long read

WTO dispute settlement is in trouble, but it can struggle on at least for a while. So can the organisation’s other important functions

This looks at the WTO Appellate Body crisis in some depth.
A simpler version is here
.
See also:
How the WTO deals with problem trade measures—it’s not just dispute settlement and The WTO is surprisingly busy — considering it’s supposed to be dead

Skip the updates

UPDATES

July 28, 2023 — By now, 130 WTO members (80% of the membership) were calling for Appellate Body judges to be appointed, but in the July 28, 2023 meeting the US refused for the 67th time to join consensus (see agenda). Go to the May 17, 2023 paper; WTO documents search for all versions (including possible newer ones with additional sponsors).

January 26, 2022 — Brazil moved to authorise (under Brazilian law) unilateral action against countries that lose in a panel ruling and appeal “into the void” to leave a dispute inconclusive.

Legal opinion seems to be that this could violate WTO rules, but so long as the Appellate Body was unable to function, Brazil could also appeal “into the void” any legal challenge in the WTO. “In the absence of the Appellate Body, this does not seem totally bonkers,” tweeted law professor Geert Van Calster

News of the move came from Tatiana Palermo, President of Palermo Strategic Consulting and a former Brazilian vice-minister and negotiator, who tweeted:

“Brazil’s President Bolsonaro has signed an executive order allowing #Brazil to retaliate unilaterally ([including] suspending IPR [intellectual property rights] obligations) in cases where the losing party appealed the #WTO panel ruling into the void & continues with unfair trade practices.”

The executive order is here, in Portuguese.

October 26, 2021 — María Pagán, the Biden administration’s nominee ambassador to the WTO, told a US Senate Finance Committee hearing on her nomination that the US does want to “restore the Appellate Body”, a point that had never been clarified since the Trump administration blocked the appointment of appeals judges:

“I think there’s consensus that the WTO, and particularly the Appellate Body, need to be reformed. I guess on the other hand, we all have different views of what reform means, and particularly with respect to the Appellate Body. What we want, and if confirmed what I will work hard to do, is to have conversations so that we can restore the Appellate Body and the dispute settlement system to what we thought we had agreed to.”

To underscore that this is an official position, Henry Hodge, spokesperson of the Office of the US Trade Representative, tweeted Bloomberg’s story on the statement with the headline “Biden’s nominee to WTO wants to restore Appellate-Body function.”

Pagán’s remark came on the day the US blocked the appointment of appeals judges for the 47th time at a WTO meeting in Geneva. It was the first sign of any new thinking in Washington. But it was too late for anything to happen in time for the November 30 to December 3 Ministerial Conference.

Trade lawyer Simon Lester said the remark is “positive” but that restoring the system “to what we thought we had agreed to” may prove to be “tricky”, a point Pagán herself acknowledged.

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED AUGUST 21, 2019 | UPDATED AUGUST 12, 2023

A casual glance at the headlines might have misled us into thinking the World Trade Organization (WTO) would grind to a halt at the end 2019, that the blame lay entirely with US President Donald Trump, and that the WTO’s demise would bring anarchy to world trade.

Only the last of those three assertions is possibly correct; and only if the WTO really does die — which it certainly won’t, not in the near future.

This is an attempt at an explanation. It shows that even WTO dispute settlement could well survive, but in a less powerful form. Other important work in the WTO will continue, and therefore so will the WTO itself.

But be warned: simple explanations of complex issues cannot tell the whole story. And even this attempt is not that simple. Sorry.

By Christmas 2019 the WTO was supposed to be dead — why wasn’t it? A short explanation

Reports of the WTO’s demise are premature. Yes, dispute settlement is in trouble, but even that can hobble on

By Peter Ungphakorn
POSTED AUGUST 21, 2019 | UPDATED AUGUST 12, 2023

This short explanation skims the surface of some pretty complicated issues. If you want more detail, with more links and references,
then try this longer version
.
See also:
How the WTO deals with problem trade measures—it’s not just dispute settlement and The WTO is surprisingly busy — considering it’s supposed to be dead

Updates:
Brazil moves to act unilaterally, and the Biden administration signals for the first time it is willing to discuss restoring the Appellate Body

By mid 2023, 130 WTO members (80% of the membership) were calling for Appellate Body judges to be appointed, but by July 28, 2023 the US had refused 67 times to join consensus (see agenda).
The May 17, 2023 paper; WTO documents search for all versions

The doom-mongers had already written off the WTO. From December no new appeals in WTO disputes would be possible and the whole organisation would grind to a halt, they claimed. They were wrong.

The problem is with the appeals stage of WTO legal disputes. Some countries are finding ways to work around that. WTO disputes cannot be the same without a properly functioning Appellate Body, but they can continue even if the system is weaker.

As for the rest of the WTO’s work, it does not rely on dispute settlement. True, member countries participate in those functions more confidently if they know the disputes system is working well, but it will still take years before they lose confidence so badly that they give up on the WTO altogether.