PRESS RELEASE : World Trade Organization General Council UK statements [July 2023]

July 30, 2023 admin 2023, Foreign Office, Press Release

The press release issued by the Foreign Office on 28 July 2023.

The UK spoke on a number of agenda items at the WTO General Council on 24-25 July 2023.

MC12 work programme on ecommerce

Like others we want to thank the excellent work of the facilitator, Ambassador Canabady, to revitalise discussions under the ecommerce work programme. The active engagement by members, including by ambassadors, and the number of written contributions – including from the UK – demonstrates that we are having a constructive discussion on the work programme. As Canada says the work programme has been reinvigorated. Given this discussion, and as you said Chair, we do question the value of repeating it here at the GC. But given we are discussing it, we just wanted to echo the concerns of the global business community about not renewing the customs duties moratorium. We have heard broad support from Members for the recent workshop with international organisations and the UK would agree. We would encourage the Facilitator to build on this success and invite businesses, in particular MSMEs from developing countries, to an informal session in the Autumn to hear directly from them why this matters. You asked us to only highlight new issues so we just wanted to highlight to the GC our communication on the ecommerce moratorium. As India recognised and AUS outline, this communication provided answers to questions from some Members on the scope, definition and impact of the moratorium. It also provides sound evidence on the moratorium’s benefits, as well as on the negative impact of it not being renewed. So, we would agree with Trinidad and Tobago and others in saying that we should reach agreement on the moratorium ahead of MC13 and avoid taking the rulebook of the WTO back to the 1990s? Thank you.

Strengthening the resilience and stability of global industrial and supply chains

Thank you Chair. Thank you, China, for your clear and helpful presentation of the paper. We agree that this is a helpful lens in which to view the challenges in the global trading system. We also agree that supply chain resilience is important. Supply chains are clearly affected by the tensions in the world economy. Looking at this paper, we should consider how to move beyond broad statements of WTO principals and expose some of the underlying tensions so that we can address them openly. We could usefully discuss how we will create a transparent, predictable, diverse market environment, and how to avoid the overconcentration of productivity in any one geography. As others have noted, this paper includes a broad set of proposals which need to be considered alongside existing work underway in many areas and other proposals. Clearly the UK will need time to review these papers closely. As we take these discussions forward, we wanted to emphasise that any dialogue on such a horizontal issue such as supply chains needs to be balanced and comprehensive so it needs to include discussions on market-distorting practices. Thank you, China, for the paper and we look forward to engaging with Members on what more the WTO can do on this very important area.

Work programme on small economies

Thank you very much Chair. Thank you to the Chair of the dedicated session for their clear and helpful update. We welcome the proposal from the chair and the Small and Vulnerable Economies Group to hold an experience-sharing session on the challenges and opportunities for small economies in the post COVID-19 recovery phase. We want to hear from members of the Small and Vulnerable Economies Group about their direct experience, and from a number of international national organisations who will also join the session to help us understand better how different members have responded to the challenges and look at how we can best support small economies and SIDS in the WTO. Thank you.

Policy space for industrial development

Thank you. I would echo a lot of what our Egyptian colleagues have said. We have had a lot of talk here and in the various retreats about policy space and what that actually looks like in practice. So I think it’s good that this is set out more clearly. We have had a lot of discussion about some of the issues such as considering state intervention, tech transfer and securing investment. We think that trade is a key driver of economic growth and development, has been, is, and should remain. We should be looking at how this organisation can best promote sustainable industrialisation particularly in LDCs, as well as address some of those global challenges to which the DG just referred. We believe the WTO rules have a particularly central role in enabling the global trading system and successful sustainable development. We also recognize that some members, particularly LDCs, face capacity constraints as they seek to exploit the opportunities. That’s indeed why as a country we support developing countries, particularly the LDCs through the Air for Trade programme, technical assistance, capacity building, and indeed our new trade preferences scheme. We’re always very happy to listen to our colleagues, particularly from LDCs to understand the challenges they face in in making the most of those opportunities. We haven’t spoken so much about it this week but the success of the negotiations on the Investment Facilitation for Development is an example of how this organisation can indeed come together to provide practical support and find constructive solutions to members seeking to achieve that sustainable development. One of the issues we talked about was tech transfer. We’re very keen to have more evidence-based discussions to better understand Members’ perspectives on tech transfer. We introduced our own paper on this issue last night in relation to voluntary licensing. We are very keen to hear questions and reactions to that non-paper. We’re very happy to engage on these papers that the African Group has put forward. We will need to take time to do so, and I think there is a process question about how exactly we do that to make the most of the expertise in the particular committees. Whether the CTD facilitation committee or elsewhere. We need to make sure we make the most of the expertise that lies within those committees as we consider proposals set out today. Thank you.

Follow-up to outcomes of Ministerial Conferences

Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, let me just echo the many messages to those around this room who are departing. It is one of those bitter-sweet elements of diplomatic life; friendships with your colleagues and then all of a sudden, they pop off again and you hope that you meet them in some future incarnation. I bid a particular fond farewell to Didier Chambovey. It had to be a Valaisan who was able to master the slippery slopes that led up to MC12 with such style, poise and calmness and we are all grateful to him. We also bid farewell to the marvelous Anabel. Thank you for your clarity of thinking and your breadth of thinking whether here or indeed online. I don’t know where I’m going to go on Twitter now that you’re leaving this building.

Coming back to the matters at hand I think we should take a degree of pride and satisfaction at this outpouring of ideas that we have about reforming this organisation. That of course is why our agenda is so packed. It’s a good thing that so much is happening, as you said the start Chair, in so many committees. We’ve tried to play our modest little part in that. With five different proposals in five different committees, plus as you’ll remember, proposals in this General Counsel on reform. I think that is generally a good thing. I think it’s good too that we’re thinking about how to make a success not just of MC13 from a substantive point of view. It’s right that we think in particular about how our ministers will arrive. Whether they’re arriving by rail or by Formula One racing motor car. Whether it’s by your stations or your pit stops I think it’s also important that we have in mind to the countryside in which they’re going to be inhabiting. The context in which they’re going to be coming here. I think there are some really interesting proposals out there from Brazil and Australia and others. We also know that whether we have an annual ministerial or biannual ministerials, or whatever we do, that in itself is not sufficient. It’s also the culture which supports it. As other people around here have said, that culture is inclusive and efficient is really important, that we look at the ways in which we prepare for ministerials and then run ministerials. Whether that be green rooms or other things.

One specific issue, which I think is so dear to so many of us, is dispute settlement. I wanted to pay tribute to the work that Marco Molina from Guatemala has been doing on this. Of course, it’s really important we do this in a transparent way, that we do as an inclusive way, and we do it in a purposeful way that leads us to a successful conclusion in Abu Dhabi. Using the work that’s been going on in this informal manner we need to continue that informality of process, in order to ensure that we do indeed succeed. Thank you Chair. Thank you for what you set out this morning in terms of our approach moving forward. Thank you for the way that you’re bringing us together. We look forward to a purposeful autumn here. It’s important that we don’t get too distracted discussing what we should discuss, and actually get down to the hard work of negotiating a successful completion of MC13.

Food security

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much to colleagues for their contribution in this topic. It’s a really important paper and thank you very much for the suggestions contained within it. We are really keen and willing to make our contribution to this reform effort in agriculture, as long as others are prepared to do so. Especially those who contribute most to the global levels of trade distorting support. We absolutely recognise that the reform of domestic support in agriculture has a key role to play in tackling food insecurity, reducing the level of harmful trade distortions. Seeing how we can repurpose that support, whilst remaining to meet the challenges of enhancing productivity, whilst also improving sustainability at a time of unprecedented climate change and biodiversity loss. It’s absolutely right that we are looking at these issues and it’s right that we seek to be creative, take on board the concerns of others and address our ambitions. That does mean that our approach has to be comprehensive and include discussions of all forms of support. Our Ukrainian colleague is right to remind us that while we are having this debate about how we can address these forms of domestic support and other types of distortions, we are living now in the aftermath of the Russian decision to withdraw from the Black Sea Grain Initiative. This is an initiative that has put 32 million tons of food on world markets over the last year. This has helped to address food insecurity and we’re now facing a withdrawal, and worse than that, we are facing renewed attacks on Ukrainian ports and Ukrainian grain storage facilitating. This can only exacerbate the insecurity that so many countries face right here and now. DG, you have recently recognised in public the role of export restrictions as something that needs to be tackled by this organisation. As something that can, and often does, exacerbate food insecurity by raising food prices. We need to look again about how we tackle this issue. As Members know, we have tabled a non-paper on this issue recently and our summer holiday homework is to turn that non-paper into a more detailed proposal to address these issues around transparency, to potentially curtail the amount of export restrictions that are imposed. We’d like to thank all those who’ve engaged with us both bilaterally and at Co-ASS on this paper and we are keen to take account of their views. Thank you.

Thank you Chair. Thank you for the ideas in the paper. We may not agree with all of them but thank you for bringing forward the paper which I think shows the importance of these issues to all of us right now. I think the Africa Group is right to say that we need to look at these issues through a developmental prism, to ensure that we’re taking the measures that we need to take in the face of the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis. We need to do this in a way that does not disable trade. What we should be looking at in the CTE is ways in which we can use trade policy positively to enable us all to reach the net zero targets, which are more essential than ever. I think that’s the big task for this organisation. We agree that we should be looking at ways in which we have more thematic discussions as well as in the CTA. That’s a feature of our own suggestions to the Committee as well. I think most important of all, inaction is not an option. We can’t just sit on our hands and say this is all too difficult. Whether it is in the face of record heat waves in China, record flooding in India or now the forest fires that are raging across Europe – we cannot just sit here and not do anything. We need to understand how trade policy actually help us deliver these real-world solutions to what is a real-world crisis. Let me just finish by paying tribute both to my successor as CTE Chair but also to the work of WTO secretariat in support of him as they were in support of me. I think they do a tremendous job. Thank you.

LDC and way forward

Thank you very much madam Chair. Let me, first of all, start by echoing everybody else’s warm praise for Xolelwa. So on the issue before us. As I think we’ve said before we would have been happy to see this issue sorted back in MC12 last June. We still think it’s really important for us to try and make every effort, strain every sinew to sort it out well before MC 13. It’s helpful in terms of showing commitment to listen and to deliver on something of importance to so many LDCs. On the precise modalities about how we go about doing that, we welcome the bilateral discussions that have been going on this. If our senior officials can help in trying to finalise or endorse a text in October. We are very happy to help in any way up to then, or beyond then. It would be good to come back in any case to this General Council for a general update in November and I think in the short term it’d be really good if we could decide to move discussion of annex 2 to the LDC subcommittee so looking at those technical discussions up and running in preparation for a fuller decision.