News and analysis on trade policy in Europe
Saturday, April 26, 2025
Wang Shouwen, China’s vice minister of commerce and deputy director of international trade negotiations, and Hong Xiaodong, director of the World Trade Department, briefed journalists about China’s position on World Trade Organization reform. Below is a translated excerpt of their comments. For the full text, including the Q&A with journalists …
US duties on steel and aluminium are not only taking a toll on countries across the globe, but they’re triggering a “wave of direct and indirect actions and reactions” that is likely to expand in the coming weeks and months. “Obviously one country’s action becomes the second country’s reason to …
The EU’s safeguard measures on steel, introduced this summer to avoid deflection of pipes, wires and rods following Washington’s decision to impose 25% steel tariffs on national security grounds, is raising hackles with trading partners. Seven World Trade Organization members expressed their grievances in Geneva today against the bloc’s decision …
Next week, Canada will unveil to a group of World Trade Organization members a discussion paper outlining consensus-based solutions that Ottawa says will bolster the global trading system. The problem is that the US – which isn’t part of that group – has already identified major elements of the Canadian …
Dennis Shea must have been wearing his dancing shoes when he spoke at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Friday. The US ambassador to the World Trade Organization pirouetted around most of questions that, had they been answered, would have offered some new insights into the …
Washington’s insistence that the World Trade Organization must be modernised before it gets behind proposals to fill Appellate Body vacancies begs the question: Why hasn’t the US come up with its own proposals to reform the Geneva-based trade body? The Trump administration said in its February Trade Policy Agenda that …
The trade policy of the Trump administration is casting a big shadow over the annual World Trade Organization Public Forum this week in Geneva. Formally, the forum is a harmless exercise in putting together panel discussions aimed at brainstorming about the future of trade and an opportunity for the global …
A trilateral meeting among the trade chiefs of the United States, Japan and the EU held in New York committed the three World Trade Organization members to launch common initiatives to overhaul the Geneva-based institution. This trilateral format of meetings started with the aim to address common concerns on – …
EU trade this week was heavy on WTO reform and China (here, here). Brexit was all over the headlines. But there are no actual new developments to report from the heads of government meeting in Austria with Prime Minister Theresa May this week. The Irish border issue remains unresolved, so …
The EU and China know they must work together to show leadership in matters of global trade and investment. But realising effective cooperation with trade partners to make the system more robust and to withstand the “disruptive bilateralism originating from Washington” is easier said than done, argues Jacques Pelkmans.
