European Union Director General for Trade Sabine Weyand said the EU has made another offer to settle the Boeing-Airbus dispute. “There's a lot we need to do to calm down the tensions in our relationship,” she said during a Sept. 15 webinar hosted by the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She pointed to the deal on lobster tariffs as good but small. “It's the first tariff liberalization we have done in 20 years” between the U.S. and EU, she noted.

A new World Trade Organization dispute settlement panel report said that the U.S. improperly applied Section 301 tariffs on goods from China. “It remains to be seen whether the US decides to appeal the ruling,” former WTO official Peter Ungphakorn said in a tweet. “Since the Appellate Body cannot function, this would be an 'appeal into the void.'” The WTO appeals court is mostly inoperable due to a U.S. hold on adding new members.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Japan's Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Mogi talked about the necessity of dispute settlement reform at the World Trade Organization, Japan said in an Aug. 26 press release, according to an unofficial translation. The release emphasized that the U.S. initiated the call, and said the need for reform is becoming more urgent.

During the monthly Dispute Settlement Body meeting at the World Trade Organization, the European Union said it adopted “additional and extraordinary” compliance measures by withdrawing all the remaining subsidies for Airbus on Aug. 21, and they said that was “substantially in excess” of what's required by the WTO rules. They said they did this in order to convince the U.S. to withdraw its tariffs on European goods, and with the intention that they would not impose tariffs over Boeing subsidies, after a negotiated settlement. “It is not in the interests of anyone that the European Union and the United States now proceed to, or continue, mutually assured retaliation, and certainly not in the current economic climate,” they said.

Moldova's Tudor Ulianovschi told the Washington International Trade Association that the fact that he's coming from a neutral country is an advantage in his candidacy for director-general of the World Trade Organization. Ulianovschi, who was speaking Aug. 26 on a WITA webinar, served as foreign minister of Moldova in 2018 and 2019, and during that time Moldova became a member of the WTO government procurement agreement.

The World Trade Organization largely sided with Canada in finding that the Commerce Department miscalculated government support for softwood lumber exporters, both by using Nova Scotia benchmarks to apply to companies in Alberta, British Columbia, Ontario and Québec, and by deciding that the sawmills were being sold electricity at below-market rates.

The Aug. 28 meeting of the World Trade Organization's Dispute Settlement Body in Geneva will include the European Union's arguments that with Airbus launch subsidies resolved, the billions of dollars in tariffs on French wine, Airbus planes, Scottish whisky and other products should be lifted. The U.S. will also weigh in.

The U.S. and the United Kingdom completed a “positive” third round of trade negotiations, carried out over the past two weeks ended Aug. 7, and agreed to begin the fourth round next month, the U.K.’s Department for International Trade said in a notice Aug. 12. The negotiations included discussions on technical barriers to trade, rules of origin and trade remedies. U.K. Trade Secretary Liz Truss, in separate discussions, focused on U.S. retaliatory tariffs on U.K. products, including on Scotch whisky, the notice said. Truss said the tariffs are “unacceptable and continued to push for their immediate removal.” The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative did not immediately comment.

Amina Mohamed, Kenya's Sports, Culture and Heritage minister and its nominee to lead the World Trade Organization, said strengthening rules on industrial subsidies and reforming the Appellate Body are critical for the WTO's continued success.

British Member of Parliament Liam Fox said his experience as United Kingdom trade minister qualifies him to lead the World Trade Organization as director-general. Political skills, not technical ones, are needed in Geneva, he said during a July 30 Washington International Trade Association webinar.