Welcome Dr Tedros, Kristalina, Angel, David and Isabelle. And many many thanks from my part.

This stocktaking comes at a critical juncture.

In the three decades before any of us had heard of a novel coronavirus, open global trade helped lift more than a billion people out of poverty.

By tapping into cross-border flows of goods, services, and ideas, developing countries were able to accelerate growth and create better jobs.

For the first time in two hundred years, developing countries started to narrow the gap with richer ones.

Yet even at the time it was clear that many people and countries were unable to take advantage of trade opportunities because they lacked the supply side capacity to do so. That is why the Aid for Trade initiative was set up in 2005.

Today the pandemic is reversing hard-won development gains, adding to the problems facing the most vulnerable.

The World Bank has warned that more than 150 million...

This summary has been prepared by the WTO Secretariat’s Information and External Relations Division to help public understanding about developments in WTO disputes. It is not a legal interpretation of the issues, and it is not intended as a complete account of the issues. These can be found in the reports themselves and in the minutes of the Dispute Settlement Body’s meetings.

Trade Policy Reviews are an exercise, mandated in the WTO agreements, in which member countries’ trade and related policies are examined and evaluated at regular intervals. Significant developments that may have an impact on the global trading system are also monitored. All WTO members are subject to review, with the frequency of review depending on the country’s size.

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In line with WTO's efforts to enhance transparency, Members have agreed to derestrict an important number of documents relating to earlier GATT Rounds of negotiations. 1

The derestricted material includes more than 5,000 records kept by the Secretariat, including bilateral requests, offers, and agreements negotiated using the "request and offer" approach".

The bilateral material has been scanned in a joint project with Stanford University Libraries to ensure its preservation.

1. For more background information on the subject please see minutes of the meetings of the Committee on Market Access (G/MA/M/52, G/MA/M/53, and G/MA/M/55) and the General Council Decision of 25 July 2013, “Derestriction of some GATT 1947 historical bilateral negotiating documentation” (WT/L/892).

Las fronteras se han dejado de lado en esta pandemia y seguramente as? ser? en el futuro. Quiz?s la inercia nos lleve a eso. ? Por eso debemos reflexionar r?pidamente y poner en pr?ctica a trav?s de las relaciones multilaterales o bilaterales este nuevo nacimiento del comercio dentro del mundo. ? Es urgente que el mundo se pueda abrir, en el comercio y en las relaciones complementarias, una vez m?s, el poder en este comercio internacional para lograr el progreso de nuestras naciones.

Luis Lacalle Pou, President of Uruguay 22 April 2021

The WTO is welcoming applications for its 2022 Young Professionals Programme (YPP), which allows qualified young professionals from developing and least-developed countries to enhance their knowledge regarding WTO and international trade issues. The YPP is a unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience which can help open the door for future professional opportunities in the field of multilateral diplomacy and global trade.

The YPP selection gives preference to young professionals from developing and least-developed countries that are members of the WTO and whose nationals are currently under-represented or not represented in the organization's Secretariat. The programme is part of the Secretariat's overall goal to increase its diversity to better reflect the make-up of its membership.

Candidates up to the age of 32, as of 1 January 2022, from eligible countries are invited to submit their application by 29 April 2021. The selected candidates will work at...

In the notification Morocco indicated, among other things, as follows (provisional translation):

“Interested parties wishing to participate in this investigation may make themselves known … by contacting the Ministry by email, as soon as possible, and at the latest by 28 May 2021.

Interested parties who want to receive and complete the questionnaire should so request by contacting the Ministry by email, as soon as possible, and at the latest by 7 May 2021.

[…]

Interested parties are invited to send all their documents, comments and requests by e-mail, with the exception of responses or bulky documents which must be delivered on USB keys, by hand or by registered mail.

Ministère de l'Industrie, du Commerce et de l'Economie Verte et Numérique Direction Générale du Commerce Direction de la Défense et de la Réglementation Commerciale Division de la Défense Commerciale Parcelle 14, Business center, aile Nord bd Riad, Hay Riad. BP 610, Rabat...

The WTO Secretariat has circulated a meeting notice and list of items proposed for the next meeting, on 28 April 2021, of the Dispute Settlement Body, which consists of all WTO members and oversees legal disputes among them. The meeting notice is circulated in the form of a document officially called an “airgram”.

Good afternoon everyone. I want to welcome you to the release of the WTO’s flagship annual trade statistics and trade forecast. This is my very first participation in that event and I want to thank you all for being with us today.

Let me start with the story of the container ship that blocked the Suez Canal for nearly a week.

We all saw that hundreds of ships were backed up in a traffic jam. Others went around the Cape of Good Hope adding considerable number of days and costs to their journey. Estimates said nearly $10 billion dollars of trade was being affected each day.

The fact that the Ever Given was able to cause so much disruption is a sign that global merchandise trade is relatively robust — and that global supply chains have held up through the pandemic.

The word ‘relatively’ is important: the volume of world merchandise trade still contracted by 5.3% in 2020. But this contraction was smaller than initially feared.

Following...

WTO members continue to conduct negotiations to reform agricultural trade. These talks began in early 2000 under the original mandate of the Agriculture Agreement and became part of the Doha Round at the 2001 Doha Ministerial Conference. At the 2013 Bali Ministerial Conference, ministers adopted important decisions on agriculture. More recently, at the 2015 Nairobi Ministerial Conference, WTO members agreed on a historic decision to eliminate agricultural export subsidies, the most important reform of international trade rules in agriculture since the WTO was established.

The negotiations take place in special sessions of the Agriculture Committee. The current chair is

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The coordinator of the negotiations, Ambassador Mathias Francke of Chile, said that the text was prepared under his responsibility with the objective of helping members progress as much as possible on developing the provisions of the future agreement. This single document will be the basis for the negotiations in the months ahead, with the understanding that specific provisions may need to be revisited in light of the evolution of the negotiations.

The new text, which is in line with the work plan endorsed by participating members at the meeting held in January this year, brings together the two working documents used up to now for the discussions, namely the revised draft text and the informal consolidated text. The Easter text will contribute to visualizing the contours of the future agreement, to facilitating consultations in capitals, and to supporting outreach efforts towards other WTO members, the coordinator said.

Ambassador Francke stressed that the...

Speaking at the conclusion of the WTO-organized meeting “COVID-19 and Vaccine Equity: What Can the WTO Contribute?”, the Director-General said that statements from government ministers, vaccine manufacturers, civil society advocates and leaders of international organizations had identified problems and pointed to potential solutions.  

“This is a problem of the global commons, and we have to solve it together,” she said.

She expressed hope that the meeting, which included roughly 50 speakers, would serve as the basis for continued dialogue aimed at delivering results in terms of increased vaccine production volumes in the short-term as well as longer-term investments in vaccine production and enhancing the trading system's contribution to pandemic preparedness.

The discussion shed light on the complexity of the vaccine scale-up challenge, DG Okonjo-Iweala said.

The large number of trade-related concerns expressed during the meeting, from...

Trade Policy Reviews are an exercise, mandated in the WTO agreements, in which member countries’ trade and related policies are examined and evaluated at regular intervals. Significant developments that may have an impact on the global trading system are also monitored. All WTO members are subject to review, with the frequency of review depending on the country’s size.

According to the update , the current rate of implementation of TFA commitments stood at 70.1 per cent for the entire WTO membership as of 22 April. This figure is expected to rise to 83 per cent by 2023 based on the notifications members had submitted on their respective implementation dates. Broken down by level of development, the current rate of implementation commitments equates to a 100 per cent rate of implementation by developed members and 61 per cent among developing members and least developed countries (LDCs). The implementation rate for each WTO member can be viewed here.

The Secretariat also reported on how much information has been received from members about technical assistance needs and available support to fully implement the TFA. Ninety-five members have notified their "Category C" designations, which identify the TFA provisions for which a member needs additional time and assistance. Eighty-seven of those members have notified the technical...

The coordinator of the negotiations, Ambassador Mathias Francke of Chile, said that the text was prepared under his responsibility with the objective of helping members progress as much as possible on developing the provisions of the future agreement. This single document will be the basis for the negotiations in the months ahead, with the understanding that specific provisions may need to be revisited in light of the evolution of the negotiations.

The new text, which is in line with the work plan endorsed by participating members at the meeting held in January this year, brings together the two working documents used up to now for the discussions, namely the revised draft text and the informal consolidated text. The Easter text will contribute to visualizing the contours of the future agreement, to facilitating consultations in capitals, and to supporting outreach efforts towards other WTO members, the coordinator said.

Ambassador Francke stressed that the...

The WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures disciplines the use of subsidies, and it regulates the actions countries can take to counter the effects of subsidies. Under the agreement, a country can use the WTO’s dispute-settlement procedure to seek the withdrawal of the subsidy or the removal of its adverse effects. Or the country can launch its own investigation and ultimately charge extra duty (“countervailing duty”) on subsidized imports that are found to be hurting domestic producers.

See also: > The Rules Negotiations > Fisheries subsidies

Aid for Trade helps developing countries, and particularly least developed countries, trade. Many developing countries face a range of supply-side and trade-related infrastructure obstacles which constrains their ability to engage in international trade.

The WTO-led Aid-for-Trade Initiative encourages developing country governments and donors to recognize the role that trade can play in development. In particular, the initiative seeks to mobilize resources to address the trade-related constraints identified by developing and least-developed countries.

Surveillance of national trade policies is a fundamentally important activity running throughout the work of the WTO. At the centre of this work is the Trade Policy Review Mechanism (TPRM). All WTO members are reviewed, the frequency of each country’s review varying according to its share of world trade.