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.

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.

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.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai published a readout of video calls she had with the leader of AstraZeneca's U.S. business and Pfizer's CEO on whether there should be a waiver of the World Trade Organization's agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The readouts did not say what either the government or companies' positions are on a TRIPS waiver, and during a background call on aid to India to combat its surge of cases and deaths, an official also sidestepped a question on the waiver. The readouts said that Tai “emphasized her commitment to working with WTO members on a global pandemic response, including the role of developing countries in any effective solution that addresses critical gaps in global production and distribution of vaccines”; and that the Pfizer CEO also wants to improve global access to the vaccine, and he discussed “how trade policy could help address the challenges of increasing vaccine production and distribution around the world.”

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai heard from 16 unions, UNITE HERE and the AFL-CIO on their wish for the U.S. to drop its opposition to a Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement waiver for COVID-19 vaccines (see 2102260053). In a readout of the April 13 online meeting, the agency said: “Ambassador Tai reiterated that the Biden-Harris Administration’s top priority is saving lives and ending the pandemic in the United States and around the world. The Ambassador conveyed the Administration’s commitment to increasing Covid-19 vaccine production and distribution, both at home and worldwide.”