When voluntary licensing fails, compulsory licensing should be used as a tool to ameliorate vaccine production globally, the European Union said in a proposal to the World Trade Organization. The proposal calls for ensuring that COVID-19 vaccines can freely cross borders, encouraging vaccine producers to expand production and offer them to countries most in need at a fair price and facilitating the use of compulsory licensing within the WTO's existing Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the European Commission said in a June 4 news release.

The next meeting of the World Trade Organization's Dispute Settlement Body will feature a few U.S. antidumping measures, according to a May 18 release from WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Among the American measures, antidumping duties on certain hot-rolled steel products from Japan, antidumping and countervailing duties on large residential washers from Korea, and methodologies for establishing antidumping measures involving China will be on the DSB's May 28 meeting agenda. In addition, the U.S.'s Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000 will come into focus, as the DSB releases its implementation of the recommendations adopted by the body.

Canada and Australia have reached a deal over market access to wine, according to a May 18 notification to the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body. Canada has agreed to lift the federal excise duty exemption on wine, and the further trade restrictive measures put in place by the government of Quebec will be eliminated, the notification said. In return, Australia dropped its legal claims against the Canada in the WTO.

The chair of the fisheries subsidies negotiations at the World Trade Organization said delegations are feeling urgency around these talks, and they should capitalize on that to get a deal done before mid-July. Ambassador Santiago Wills of Colombia, chair of the WTO fisheries subsidies negotiations, released a new document text on May 11 to guide members to a solution on the subsidies dispute ahead of the July 15 ministerial meeting. The text outlines the types of illegal fishing and subsidies that a negotiated agreement would outlaw to prevent overcapacity and overfishing. Beginning May 24, WTO members will have the opportunity to identify other issues on which agreement will be most difficult to obtain, according to a press release from the WTO. Wills said, “This leaves us just two months to finish. The shared sense of urgency is palpable, and we need to harness that sense to finally agree to the compromise landing zones that will represent the ambitious and balanced outcome that ministers in Buenos Aires mandated us to find, to make a substantial and tangible contribution to the health of our shared oceans.”

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced May 5 that the U.S. will support an intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines, but she cautioned that negotiating the language in Geneva will take time, because of both the need for consensus at the World Trade Organization and the “complexity of the issues.” Top Democrats in Congress welcomed the announcement. Tai also said the administration will work to increase production of raw materials for vaccines.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced May 5 that the U.S. will support an intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines, but cautioned that negotiating the language in Geneva will take time, because of the need for consensus at the World Trade Organization, and because of the “complexity of the issues.” Top Democrats in Congress welcomed the announcement. Tai also said the administration will work to increase production of raw materials for vaccines, which has been the constraint so far for Indian vaccine manufacturers. Pfizer has expressed interest in manufacturing in India if it would speed approval of its vaccine; India currently does not allow imports of Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

Member nations of the World Trade Organization agreed to continue consideration of the temporary waiver on certain intellectual property requirements for COVID-19 vaccine production, at an April 30 meeting of the Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), the WTO announced in a press release. The waiver proposal was submitted by South Africa and India but faces opposition from some of the globe's wealthiest countries, such as the U.S., the United Kingdom and countries in the European Union, that have blocked the plan. The chair of the council is tasked with reporting to the General Council on the group's decision regarding the IP waiver at the next meeting on May 5-6.

Former U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization Dennis Shea says a planned discussion at the WTO about matters that affect trade in cotton “must examine the trade impact of the use of forced labor to pick cotton in China’s Xinjiang province.” Shea, who was writing for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he is now an adjunct fellow, said “ignoring what is happening in Xinjiang would be tantamount to the WTO holding a meeting on global public health and trade without mentioning the Covid-19 pandemic. ... The use of forced labor in the province has likely depressed the global price of cotton, adversely impacted other cotton-exporting nations (particularly those in the developing world) and improperly distorted global trade flows,” and may even be a countervailable subsidy. Shea said the U.S. should raise the issue during the late May meeting.

Even as the U.S. and the European Union work privately to resolve their differences over subsidies to Airbus and Boeing, a U.S. representative at the World Trade Organization complained that the EU provided no status update on coming into compliance over Airbus subsidies. The EU said that the measures it took in August 2020 (see 2008280051) were more than enough to comply with a WTO ruling, according to a Geneva trade official.

The U.S. praised Vietnam for its role in the World Trade Organization fisheries negotiations and its fight against transshipment, but said it has concerns about sanitary and phytosanitary measures in Vietnam that in the U.S. view are unwarranted barriers to trade.