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Info Service on WTO and Trade Issues (Jul25/01) Geneva, 3 Jul (D. Ravi Kanth) — In a restricted document issued on 25 June, the chair of the World Trade Organization’s Council for Trade in Goods (CTG) reported that “several members lamented that the CTG had lost some of its identity”, while an unnamed member has sought a discussion on whether the CTG “was still complying with its mandate and role”. With the seemingly ongoing assault on the WTO by the Trump administration through a host of unilateral actions, there are growing fears each passing day over the very survival of the multilateral trade body, said a trade envoy, who asked not to be quoted. Ahead of the WTO’s CTG meeting on 7 July, the chair, Ambassador Gustavo Nerio Lunazzi of Argentina, issued a restricted document (Job/CTG/70) on “Improving the functioning of the Council for Trade in Goods” following his consultations with members. In the five-page document, seen by the SUNS, the chair states that “the Council was designed as an intermediary body between its subsidiary and more technical bodies and the General Council, the Organization’s highest permanent body.” “Over the years,” the chair said, “this intermediary role appeared, in the view of these Members, to have diminished, both in terms of the level of representation, which historically was at mostly DPR [deputy permanent representative]-level, and the types of issues discussed, where some of the past CTG-level horizontal issues are now discussed at the General Council or else partially in CTG subsidiary bodies.” Moreover, according to the chair, “in several instances, issues were raised by Members directly from the subsidiary bodies to the General Council, bypassing the CTG.” “On the other hand, these Members were of the view that the effectiveness and success of the CTG in the reform- by-doing discussions had demonstrated that it still had a very important role to play, including in developing and coordinating with its subsidiary bodies good working practices that could then be replicated by other bodies,” the chair said. The chair further said that “one Member wished the Council to discuss whether this body was still complying with its mandate and role.” At a recent General Council meeting, the United States rejected the notion of “reform-by-doing”, prompting the WTO Director-General, Ms Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to say that members need to think about new ways. The US Trade Representative’s Trade Policy Agenda for 2025 suggested that “going forward, the United States will continue to look for new avenues to make the WTO more relevant and viable in light of the realities of today, but it will do so with an appreciation that meaningful reform will require participation by other Members, including those that have benefited from the failure of the WTO to fulfill its objectives.” In his document, the chair said that it is important to continue the consultations “in a spirit of openness, inclusiveness, transparency, and Member-driven engagement, in an informal meeting of the Council in September.” ROLE & FUNCTIONING OF CTG Elaborating on the “role and functioning of the CTG”, the chair informed that “all members highlighted how pleased they were with the way that the Council had been functioning over the past years, and in particular the improvements that were introduced as part of the reform-by-doing process.” According to the chair, members seemed open to “CTG improvements as reflective of best practices, and welcomed the adoption of many of these improvements, not only by the CTG’s subsidiary bodies, but also by other bodies across the WTO.” However, he said that some members considered that “this exercise had been largely exhausted, [while] others believed that the momentum should not be lost, and that the exercise should remain ongoing.” Without naming the member, the chair pointed out that “One Member thought that the Council had proven to be a very innovative body, so it might also try to experiment with further reforms and new approaches, including, for example, testing new tools to improve the functioning of WTO bodies based on artificial intelligence.” One unnamed member added that “they saw great potential for the Council to continue aggregating information about the developments in the subsidiary bodies, which had thus far provided a broad overview of these activities and facilitated determining their priorities.” Several other members said “more should be done to differentiate the political role of the CTG vis-a-vis the more technical and specialized work undertaken in its subsidiary bodies.” Against this backdrop, the chair delved into “possible areas for further work,” chief among them being “trade concerns.” TRADE CONCERNS The chair said that “exchanges around trade concerns were extremely useful as a means to gaining further information and clarity on the issues raised.” Several members seem to be concerned “by what they considered to be excessive repetition because of concerns being repeatedly raised without them necessarily coming nearer to a resolution.” According to the chair, it appears that the same “discussions were often replicated at the level of the CTG’s subsidiary bodies, and in particular in the Committee on Market Access.” He said several delegations “were of the view that these discussions had become pro forma, with little value added, as if the only goal were to maintain the issue on the agenda.” “In their view,” the chair said, “the fact that trade concerns remained on the agenda for years without reaching resolution meant to them that the repetition was serving no purpose, possibly because of an absence of bilateral follow-up between the Council’s meetings.” At the same time, the chair said that “these Members noted that the lack of a fully functioning dispute settlement system could be discouraging Members from raising their ongoing concerns under the DSU [Dispute Settlement Understanding], while they were at the same time under internal pressure to demonstrate to domestic constituencies that they were making efforts to resolve the issue.” Emphasizing the need for value-added discussions on the trade concerns process, the chair said that he wants members to keep this point in mind. The chair suggested several concrete ideas as proposed by members for the next steps. They include: a. “For the CTG Chairperson to deliver a statement at the beginning of the trade concern discussions at each of the Council’s formal meetings, inviting Members to avoid repetition, and to refrain from repeating the same technical discussions from the CTG’s subsidiary bodies and instead to focus on providing updates of changes since the last meeting; b. Include in that statement a reminder to Members of the possibility of requesting the Chairperson’s good offices in case all parties consent to it; c. To adopt the draft CTG decision to record the positive resolution of trade concerns, circulated in document JOB/CTG/64/Rev.1. This is considered to be a useful way to demonstrate to Capitals and other stakeholders that trade concerns discussions at the CTG could indeed resolve some of these issues; d. Create a space for Members to meet bilaterally either before or during the days when formal CTG meetings are held, so they can have a frank conversation and exchange information with a view to announcing these developments at the respective meeting. A similar idea was for the Chairperson to encourage Members to try to meet bilaterally before each formal meeting, and to include capital-based officials where possible, and when Members’ resources allowed, and also to meet between meetings; and e. Explore the possibility of developing induction or explanatory materials to explain how trade concern discussions were expected to take place in the Council, as well as the relationship with the discussions held in the CTG’s subsidiary bodies. These new materials could help Geneva-based delegates explain to their Capitals what was expected from them, thus guiding their preparation for CTG meetings and trade concern discussions.” NOTIFICATIONS Based on the views expressed by members, the chair suggested several concrete ideas concerning notifications. They include: 1. “Organize a dedicated session, including both Geneva and Capital-based officials, after the submission of the reports from the subsidiary bodies to the CTG, in response to the Chair’s communication (JOB/CTG/64), which are expected later in the year. This session would focus on exploring different facets of the principle of transparency to identify the root causes for the gaps in submissions. The discussions could include, for example, what had been effective in areas with the highest notification submission rates, what challenges Members were facing when endeavouring to submit pending notifications, how best to assist them, what the best practices in the preparation of notifications and delivery of technical assistance were, and whether something other than technical assistance was required to make it easier for Members to notify. One Member mentioned that they were exploring how to use artificial intelligence to assist in the preparation of draft notifications, and that they would be open to sharing their experience with other Members; 2. Discuss how to improve the Council’s reports on notifications and refine or expand the analysis around the matter and provide Members with more detailed information; 3. Explore whether Trade Policy Reviews could be used to promote the submission of pending notifications. In this regard, certain delegations found it contradictory that some Members would provide information on their trade measures for trade policy reviews, but did not follow with the respective notifications of the same measures. They could not understand why Members subject to review failed to submit the same information in notification format; 4. Try to identify overlaps across notifications to see if there were synergies or additional actions that could be taken to improve the rate of notifications in the relevant areas, and/or minimize the work needed to prepare these notifications; 5. Explore whether the National Committees on Trade Facilitation could be leveraged to improve coordination in the preparation of notifications outside of the TFA [Trade Facilitation Agreement], in areas where these government agencies were involved; and 6. Introduce a new type of targeted and individualized reminder to delegates on the pending notifications. For example, to alert them to their respective Member’s pending notification status every time they accessed the WTO webpage. Other issues mentioned by the chair in his document include improvements concerning “digital tools”, thematic sessions, and election of members to the subsidiary bodies, including “the repeated failure of Members to agree upon the annual slate of names for the CTG’s subsidiary bodies (also known as the Tier 2 process), in the way originally envisioned.” The chair recalled the proposal put forward in the General Council in this regard, which had included practical steps to improve this process (WT/GC/W/950/Rev.7). According to the chair, one member “saw the process of selection of chairs to subsidiary bodies that fall under CTG as fundamentally broken and thought it was important to fix it,” though there is a recognition that the CTG could do nothing about this issue. OTHER ISSUES According to the chair, members also presented their ideas on other issues, including the following: a. A request to the Secretariat to organize another introductory session for new delegates; and b. One Member considered that the Secretariat should continue trying to improve the scheduling and sequencing of the meetings of the CTG and its subsidiary bodies, but acknowledged the various constraints and considerations. The chair plans to convene an informal meeting “so that when we meet again you will be in a position to engage actively and constructively on these matters.” The chair has invited members to express their “preliminary reactions” to his report on 7 July. However, the real “malaise” is largely due to one member who seems to have embarked on transforming the WTO to abide by their sovereign decisions and rules, said members, who asked not to be quoted. +
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