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TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2018
Click HERE for yesterday's quote from Vice President Pence.
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ON CONFLICT IN THE WTO ... AND ELSEWHERE
"Like a married couple, you agree on 80 percent of the issues, and on the 20 percent you disagree hard. And it's always the same 20 percent. [But] you find a way to talk about these things."
Tomas Baert
October 17, 2018
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They look like bridge arches, those curves on a sheet of music that mark a melodic phrase. We'd be inclined to put one over the first 12 minutes or so of the Q & A session that ended last month's GBD program on WTO reform. To be sure it was a long phrase, one with four voices, and it ended with the above trill from Tomas Baert, who heads the trade and agriculture section at the EU Delegation in Washington.
The first notes were in a question asked by Dick Cunningham of Steptoe and Johnson. When the topic is reform or crisis at the WTO, attention usually turns to the concern that, ultimately, the system will grind to a halt if the U.S. continues to block new appointments to the Appellate Body. Mr. Cunningham had a different worry. "It seems to me," he said, "that there are cases underway now that are going to reach action-forcing outcomes within the year - a year and half at most." Among them are:
- China's challenge to the EU's continued used of non-market methodology in antidumping cases against China,
- Challenges to the tariffs imposed by the United States under Section 232 (national security) and under Section 301,
- Indonesia's challenge to antidumping duties by Australia. The outcome of that case could affect the policies of both the EU and the United States, Mr. Cunningham said.*
In addition to listing cases, and before asking the panel how they thought these issues should be dealt with, Mr. Cunningham noted that "We're at a point where the U.S. has already started to disregard Appellate Body rulings. DS464 on differential pricing has been in effect for two years now and the U.S has simply not implemented."*
Ambassador Alan Wolff, the Deputy Director General of the WTO, was the first to respond. Some of what he said was included in an earlier TTALK Quote. Here we shall pick up just the tail end of Ambassador Wolff's reply, in which he said:
When I first met with [Roberto] Azevêdo, the Director-General of the WTO, on taking this job, I said, "There are a number of IEDs in the WTO's roadway," and you have just named a bunch of them. And, you know, we're driving along in a not-heavily-armored vehicle.
Next came Canada's ambassador to the WTO, Stephen de Boer. He seemed to be reacting as much to Ambassador Wolff's comments as to Mr. Cunningham's question. The Deputy Director-General had suggested that the responsibility for solving or resolving different WTO issues may vary with the issue. Some matters may lie solely within the discretion of individual members. Certainly, that is the U.S. (and Russian) position when it comes to national security. Others, he suggested, are clearly within the purview of the dispute settlement system to resolve. But there may be some issues that might best be referred back to the membership as a whole, especially those where the ambiguity of the rules is arguably intentional. (Where members have failed to come to an agreement on a question, the rules will of necessity be ambiguous.)
Ambassador de Boer underscored the need for a still wider circle of parties to become involved. He said:
We need to create the conditions that make it amenable for everyone to get back inside the tent. I'm not quite sure what that is going to take, but that can't just be left to the WTO members. Everyone who has a stake in the system needs to speak up.
We began this entry with a comment from Tomas Baert. Here is a richer version of his response to Mr. Cunningham.
I think the underlying point of your question was that we don't have a lot of time, and I very much agree with that. If I may just maybe quote the former, late Swiss ambassador to the WTO,
Luzius Wasecha, who was often told by the Chinese that
"You, Swiss, you have watches, but we Chinese, we have time."
So time is a very particular notion, and I am sometimes surprised that, in this environment, the administration believes it has time vis-à-vis China. A few months maybe, but I think the Chinese will certainly have a lot more time.
So time is pressing. We're very clear about that. You mentioned some of those events. What is clear is that we now need to move to action. This is not about words. This not about declaring our love of the system. This is about moving forward and really finding a new consensus: first on the diagnosis, on what is the problem; second, on how we want to fix it. And that should, hopefully, strengthen and improve some of the armor that we put on our vehicle.
There will always be IEDs along the road. And we've had many of them already, especially in the bilateral EU-U.S. transatlantic relationship. But that is what you do as close partners.
Like a married couple, you agree on 80 percent of the issues, and on 20 percent you disagree hard. And it's always the same 20 percent. You find a way to talk about these things. You find a way to manage these things. So, we don't have a lot of time, and we need to move to action.
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If we continue commenting on these constantly changing issues, it is safe to assume we will be revisiting most of the above ideas, including those about time and "a new consensus". We will end today's entry, however, as it began, namely with Mr. Baert's analogy of marriage to the challenge of managing some of the larger WTO issues.
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Shortly after the GBD event finished on the afternoon of October 17, your editor called his wife and shared the "married couple" analogy with her. "Well," she said, "he certainly understands marriage."
The following Tuesday, October 23, GBD met with about 20 officials from Shanghai. In that session too we shared our recollection of Mr. Baert's comments. Understandably, they reacted to them in the context of the current tensions between China and the United States. As one Chinese official put it, "Don't discount the possibility of divorce."
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From the Q and A is a link to the page on the GBD website with materials from the October 17 event. The recording of the concluding Q&A session is at the bottom of the page. This was the source of today's featured quotes.
TTALK For October 25 is the earlier entry from the October 17 WTO event, with additional comments from Ambassador Alan Wolff.
*Note. In some instances, the case mentioned is simply our best guess as to what the speaker was referring to. This is one of them.
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©2018 The Global Business Dialogue, Inc.
1717 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, Suite 1025
Washington, DC 20006
Tel: (202) 463-5074
R. K. Morris, Editor
Joanne Thornton, Associate Editor
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