At the end of their meeting in Washington on Wednesday 9 January 2019, the European Union, Japan and the United States undertook to soon put proposals on the table to strengthen multilateral trade rules.
European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, Japan's Minister of Trade, Hiroshige Sekō, and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer have been working since 2017 on the challenges facing the multilateral trading system and the market economy (see EUROPE 12104).
Mrs Malmström recalled that these efforts were aimed, among other things, at addressing the shortcomings of the World Trade Organisation (WTO): "We are worried about many of the Chinese practices because there are no real rules for that in the WTO - and that's what we're trying to remedy”.
In a joint statement issued at the end of the meeting, the three political leaders committed themselves to quickly finalising several projects. This is the case for subsidies to industry, where "ministers have instructed their staff to finalise, by spring at the latest, the trilateral work [...] as part of a draft text, in order to engage other key WTO members".
On e-commerce, all three parties committed to relaunching plurilateral negotiations at the WTO during Japan's 2019 G20 presidency. “For the making of e-commerce rules, we hope to cooperate all three so that the ministers participating at the Davos meeting this month can agree on the start of negotiations”, the Japanese minister said via Twitter.
As for forced transfers of technology, the parties confirm, among other things, that they will cooperate in the development of new rules (see EUROPE 12164).
The declaration also confirms the United States' commitment to its partners in the WTO dispute settlement mechanism. All three will continue to “work together to maintain the effectiveness of existing WTO disciplines, including through ongoing WTO disputes".
See the statement: https://bit.ly/2Rl1PeB. (original version in French by Hermine Donceel)