Canada Unveils Plan to Bolster WTO in Face of U.S. Protectionism
Source: Bloomberg
Trump has threatened to withdraw from the WTO, repeatedly attacked the organization as being biased against U.S. interests. The Canadian government released a new blueprint Tuesday to reinforce the World Trade Organization and buffer it from President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ attacks on the Geneva-based trade body.
The proposal, called “Strengthening and Modernizing the WTO,” seeks to forge an alliance of like-minded countries to “restore confidence in the multilateral trading system and discourage protectionist measures and countermeasures,” according to a copy of the eight-page document obtained by Bloomberg.
Trade ministers from the European Union and a dozen other WTO members are expected to discuss the proposal next month when they meet in Ottawa from Oct. 24-25.
“We know that the WTO is not perfect, but we know it’s good and we seek to make it better,” Canadian Trade Minister Jim Carr said at Council on Foreign Relations event in New York on Tuesday. “So we’ve invited these like-minded nations from all over the world to see if we can’t come up with a consensus for reform that we will then roll out for other members of the WTO.”
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-25/canada-unveils-plan-to-bolster-wto-in-face-of-u-s-protectionism?srnd=politics-vp
Since 2017 the Trump administration has refused to appoint and reappoint members to the appellate body, which has the final say in upholding, modifying, or reversing WTO rulings. If the U.S. continues its hold, the body will be paralyzed by late 2019 because it will lack the three panelists required to sign off on rulings.
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