The World Trade Organisation faces a critical period until the end of the year to re-establish itself as an accepted and functioning global umpire, Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan has said.
Mr Tehan emerged from intensive talks with WTO officials in Geneva at the end of last week, on his first trip overseas in his new portfolio, with a rough deadline of July for the world’s like-minded trade ministers to devise a roadmap for reforming the beleaguered body.
That would form the basis for wider agreement at a much-delayed conference of up to 164 trade ministers set for the end of the year.
That summit could clarify whether the WTO can fully recover its role at the apex of the world trade system, after the battering it received during the Trump presidency and throughout the US-China trade frictions.
“The ministerial meeting at the end of this year, it’s going to be absolutely vital that we can all demonstrate that some progress has been made on key issues,” Mr Tehan said.
Mr Tehan said he was encouraged at the prospects for WTO reform after his 2½-hour meeting with the body’s new director general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
He said her initiative and drive in convening governments, industry and NGOs to give the WTO a role in boosting COVID-19 vaccine production was a promising sign of her intent and capabilities.
WTO negotiations on a treaty to curb damaging fisheries subsidies are stalled, and talks on an e-commerce agreement have slowed. Festering disputes on subsidies to agriculture, steel and aluminium seem to go round and round.
The US and the EU are chafing at China’s advantageous WTO status as a developing country, and at the body’s seeming reluctance to up the pressure on Beijing over industrial subsidies.
2021 The Australian Financial Review