A panel at the World Trade Organization held that 2015 countervailing duties levied against two Canadian producers of supercalendered paper relied on assumptions that were not justified, and an appellate body panel agreed on Feb. 6.

The World Customs Organization published a list of changes in the upcoming 2022 version of the Harmonized System tariff nomenclature, it said in a press release. The 351 sets of amendments include 77 affecting tariff provisions for agriculture, food and tobacco, 58 in the chemical sector, 31 in the wood sector, 21 for textiles, 27 for base metals, 63 in the machinery, electrical and electronic goods sector, and 22 affecting the transport sector, the WCO said. The amendments were recommended by the WCO’s Harmonized System Committee in June, and took effect in January after a six-month period passed with no objections to the proposals by WCO member states (see 2001080064). The changes must be implemented in the tariff schedules of WCO members, including the U.S., by Jan. 1, 2022.

Japan, Australia and Singapore and 80 other World Trade Organization members agreed to develop a “consolidated negotiating text” for WTO e-commerce negotiations by the next WTO conference in June, according to a joint press release. The plan was agreed to during a Jan. 24 informal meeting on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, where they said “good progress” has been made during the first year of negotiations. Members said the negotiations will address e-commerce trade challenges faced by developing countries and small to medium-sized businesses.

A group of 17 World Trade Organization members announced plans for an interim appeals process to settle disputes between members, according to a Jan. 24 joint statement. The members, including the European Union and China but not the U.S., said they will put in place “contingency measures” to allow for appeals of WTO panel reports “in disputes among ourselves.” The system would only be in place until a reformed WTO appellate body “becomes fully operational,” the statement said.

New European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told a German wire service that she and President Donald Trump want an agreement that resolves issues “in a few weeks.” But she didn't say how comprehensive such an agreement would be.

The ideal of free trade has been imperiled by politicians' inaction in the face of harm by foreign competition, said panelists at a Davos forum on free trade. Roberto Azevedo, director-general of the World Trade Organization, said that free trade is associated with economic growth -- but prosperity also increases the gap between rich and poor. When disparities grow, he said, the answer is not to grow, but to avoid inequality. “The problem is governments are often MIA. They are missing in action. They are seeing inequalities grow, and they do nothing about it,” he said, until there is political upheaval. He said politicians don't consider the economic realities as much as the desire of voters. “An easy answer in the age of disruption is to blame the foreign,” he said. “Imports is an easy target, so why not?”

The contracting parties to the Harmonized System Convention approved the 2022 edition of the Harmonized System, the World Customs Organization said in a news release. “The HS serves as the basis for Customs tariffs and for the compilation of international trade statistics in 211 economies (of which 158 are Contracting Parties to the HS Convention),” it said. The new HS2022, which comes into force Jan. 1, 2022, “makes some major changes to the Harmonized System with a total of 351 sets of amendments covering a wide range of goods moving across borders,” the WCO said.

Possible transshipment of shrimp claimed as from Malaysia could be behind a slew of import alerts from the Food and Drug Administration in recent years, Malaysia's Fisheries Department said in a Jan. 4 news release. The Malaysian agency issued the statement in response to an article in The Star about the state of seafood from the country that noted that between 2009 and 2018, the FDA found illegal antibiotics among many shrimp shipments. “We suspect an element of transshipment, involving shrimp from foreign countries outside of our jurisdiction, that were imported and then re-exported to the United States,” the department said in its statement, according to an unofficial translation. The agency said “a total of 2,466 samples were taken for the period 2008 to date and analyzed at the Fisheries Biosecurity Laboratory which has been ISO certified and found that no antibiotic substances were detected and that all local livestock shrimp samples were not detected / negative in the presence of antibiotics.”

The Chinese government will offer legal services through “an intellectual property service station” at the Consumer Electronics Show Jan. 7-10 in Las Vegas in order to respond to intellectual property rights infringement injunctions, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said in a notice, according to an unofficial translation. “The service station employs American practicing lawyers from well-known American law firms to provide exhibitors with free legal advisory services on intellectual property rights and assist enterprises in resolving intellectual property infringement disputes,” the ministry said.

The U.S. delegation to the World Trade Organization rejected a proposal from countries on how to reform the appellate body (see 1912090031), saying that without understanding how the appellate body's overreach problem developed, there's no reason to believe that restating the constraints on the appellate body's authority will work. In December, when the appellate body ceased to exist because of U.S. refusal to allow new appointees, the National Foreign Trade Council hired Tailwinds Global Strategy's Bruce Hirsh to put forward ideas of how to resolve the impasse