World Trade Organization Ambassador Santiago Wills of Colombia, who chairs WTO's fisheries subsidies negotiation, submitted on June 30 a revised version of the draft text on the fisheries subsidies agreement. A ministerial meeting will be held July 15. The revised text includes an initial text on the prohibition of subsidies on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, subsidies toward overcapacity and overfishing, and specific provisions for least developed country members. “In this sense, the text should help ministers to engage on 15 July in a way that will provide us the kind of push and political guidance that we need at this stage to be able to move towards conclusion,” Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in a statement. “I sense a change in mood, and we should take advantage of that mood to push towards concluding these negotiations.”

The deadline for least developed countries to align their intellectual property rights protections under the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which was to expire July 1, is now July 1, 2034, a June 29 WTO news release said. TRIPS Council members approved the 13-year extension June 29. The TRIPS transition period for LDCs has twice before been extended -- in 2005 and 2013.

World Trade Organization Deputy Director-General Angela Ellard focused on the positive in her keynote speech to the American Association of Exporters and Importers, even as she recognized the strain the COVID-19 pandemic put on trade and the rise in protectionism in recent years.

The European Union and the U.S. working together have the leverage to change China's distortions in the world economy, experts speaking during a three-day series on EU-U.S. trade issues said. But it's not easy, with the economic interests of German manufacturers in China, the history of trade tensions across the Atlantic, and bureaucratic torpor on both sides, they said.

Australia filed a complaint at the World Trade Organization over what it says are unfair Chinese antidumping duties on Australian wine. It filed the complaint after “extensive consultation” with Australia’s winemakers, who have been subject to high duties for months (see 2012100016 and 2011300022), it said June 19. Although Australia initiated a WTO dispute resolution process, it said it “remains open to engaging directly with China to resolve this issue.”

The Japanese government has requested consultations with the government of China at the World Trade Organization over Chinese antidumping duties on stainless steel billets, hot-rolled coils and hot-rolled plates from Japan, it said in a June 15 consultation request. The measures are inconsistent with China's commitments in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994, Japan said. The antidumping duties were not based on positive evidence, were imposed without proper analyses and were put in place without demonstrating a harm to domestic industry, the request said.

Ukraine launched a safeguard investigation into ceramic tiles June 1, then notified the World Trade Organization on June 4, according to a WTO news release. Following a petition from Ukrainian ceramics producers Interkerama, Kharkiv Title Plant and Zeus Ceramics, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Agriculture of Ukraine will conduct the investigation, the nation's state-run newspaper said in a report, according to an unofficial translation. After 30 days from the publication of the notice, the ministry will lock in the parties to the investigation and after 45 days will review the comments from the parties regarding the initiation of the investigation.

The World Trade Organization received an updated petition from online activist group Avaaz, signed by more than 2.7 million people, calling for universal access to COVID-19 vaccines, according to June 7 press release. Forty different organizations globally were involved in the petition, including Public Citizen, the People's Vaccine Alliance and Amnesty International. The petition was delivered the day before a meeting of the Council for Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, where discussions are ongoing on a proposal to waive TRIPS Agreement obligations for the vaccine. "The WTO is very appreciative of the time and dedication that Avaaz and others continue to give to this important issue," said Bernard Kuiten, the WTO's head of external relations. "The WTO needs to be aware of citizens' views and concerns with trade matters that could directly affect them. Avaaz and others are helping to raise awareness about access to vaccines and their vital role in ensuring a global solution to the COVID-19 crisis." An original version of the petition had more than 900,000 signatures and was dropped off at the WTO on Dec. 9, 2020.

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.