On Tuesday 25 September, European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström and her US and Japanese counterparts, Robert E. Lighthizer and Hiroshige Sekō, continued their trilateral talks in New York on subsidies and other harmful practices to trade.
The joint statement published at the end of their meeting mentions several key elements of the concept paper for the modernisation of the WTO that published by the European Commission on 18 September (see EUROPE 12098).
The three trade partners thus underlined the need to improve the effectiveness of existing rules and to work on new rules in the field of industrial subsidies and state enterprises, including the search for ways to sanction countries deliberately forgetting to notify these subsidies.
They expressed their intention "to advance their respective internal steps" before the end of 2018, with the aim of launching negotiations as quickly as possible on more effective rules on subsidies.
The three ministers agree to support together a proposal on the issue of transparency and notifying subsidies at the next meeting of the WTO Council on trade in goods, in November.
The need to counter forced transfers of technology is also underlined, as is the desire to ask the most economically advanced countries to leave the group of developing countries (which benefits from flexibility in the framework of the WTO).
Digital and electronic trade
Hailing the progress on the exploratory work that was started at the WTO conference in Buenos Aires last December, the three partners also underline their common wish swiftly to open plurilateral negotiations at the WTO on digital and electronic trade. They call for "a high standard agreement with the participation of as many members as possible".
During the Concordia summit the same day, Lighthizer admitted that a reform of Chinese trade practices would "not be easy". He furthermore rather unexpectedly commended the role of the WTO.
The tripartite statement can be consulted at: https://bit.ly/2Ih4cav. (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)