시역_무역경제_남소현

[남소현]

시역_무역경제_남소현.docx

17.90KB

Remarks by Ambassador Katherine Tai on the World Trade Organization and the Multilateral Trading System (2023 Sep)

* 일부 발췌 후 사소하게 수정하였습니다.

Glossary

Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies 어업 보조금 협정

WTO

the Appellate Body 상소기구

For decades, the United States has been proud to champion the international rules-based order and the multilateral trading system. 

With partners, we negotiated a system reflecting our common vision of openness, transparency, and fair, market-oriented competition.

But the functioning and fairness of this order are now in question. 

That is why, as all of us adapt to a more challenging era—marked by rapid technological change, increasing extreme climate events, vulnerable supply chains, intensifying geopolitical friction, widening inequality, and spiking food insecurity—we all need a WTO focused on its foundational goals. 

This is precisely why the United States is writing a new story on trade. 

We’re pursuing fair competition, addressing the climate crisis, promoting our national security, and ensuring the rules-based system helps all economies, not just the biggest ones.  Our aim is to grow our economy from the middle out and the bottom up, and our trade policies are an integral part of that goal.

The WTO and the multilateral trading system’s rules were never meant to be immutable or static.  The creators of the WTO envisioned an organization that would change and adapt through negotiations among its Members.

Take climate change, which was not our focus when we created the WTO. 

Today, I think all of us agree that the WTO needs to be part of the climate solution.  The WTO has multiple climate workstreams.  But we need to focus on how the WTO can support and facilitate Members taking meaningful actions on climate. 

Another example is the interests of workers.  At a time when working people in many of our societies are reporting an increasing sense of economic insecurity, we should remember that workers are the backbone of our resilience.  Their success is our success.  But the current WTO does not reflect that.

This is why we are working with WTO Members on a comprehensive reform agenda. 

The good news is that many Members—developed and developing countries—share in this vision.  After all, the WTO’s founding document recognizes that trade should raise living standards, ensure full employment, pursue sustainable development, and protect the environment.

We are ready to adapt and are rolling up our sleeves. In fact, you can see this resolve in action as the United States and dozens of Members have ratified the new Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies—and many, many more are working to complete ratification.

Right now, being committed to the WTO also means being committed to a real reform agenda.  So, let me highlight a few of our priorities for a WTO fit for today’s economic realities.

First, improving transparency. 

The United States was the first Member to table a proposal on transparency five years ago. 

Transparency is a precondition to ensuring fairness and accountability in the system.  Every WTO Member has the responsibility to let other Members—and the public—know of their laws and regulations affecting trade.

This is critical for fair competition and a level playing field for working people everywhere.  Strengthening transparency will improve our ability to monitor compliance and to resolve our disputes.

To get there, we need to make it easier for Members to share their laws and regulations and for the public to search and view them.  That’s why we are working on using new digital tools to do just that.  And we support providing technical assistance for developing countries so that we all benefit from this.

We also need to make this a meaningful norm of WTO membership.  Members took on an unqualified obligation to be transparent and make notifications, and these commitments have to mean something.  Countries that are deliberately not honoring this obligation are undermining the international trading system. 

Our next priority is continuing to rebuild the WTO’s ability to negotiate new rules for the new challenges that we face. 

This won’t be easy or comfortable.  But it is necessary to create the rules and mechanisms we need for the times through diplomacy and negotiation between Members, not through litigation.

Let me explain what I mean.  For example, consider the massive global economic disruptions from non-market policies and practices that are contrary to the basic rules and norms that we all agreed to. 

Things like industrial targeting or discriminatory interventionist activities of state-owned enterprises.  This is how certain Members are continuing to skew the playing field, strategically and systematically. 

They seek to dominate key industrial sectors, promote national champions and discriminate against foreign competitors, massively subsidize key sectors, and manipulate cost structures. 

And as they become dominant suppliers for many important goods and technologies, they create supply chain concentrations and vulnerabilities—which in turn become levers for economic coercion. 

These practices are unfair and disadvantage workers in developing and developed countries alike, the very people the system should empower and lift up.  So, we need to have real conversations about how the WTO can address these issues.

Finally, I want to highlight dispute settlement reform. 

The goal here is not restoring the Appellate Body or going back to the way things used to be.  It is about providing confidence that the system is fair.  And revitalizing the agency of Members to settle their disputes. 

The system was meant to facilitate mutually agreed solutions between Members.  But over time, it has become synonymous with litigation—costly and drawn out, and often only accessible to Members who have the resources to foot the bill. 

The system has also suffered from a lack of restraint.  The Appellate Body systematically overreached to usurp the role of Members themselves to negotiate and create new rules.  And in so doing, it undermined the ability of all Members to defend their workers from harmful non-market policies.

For the last year, we’ve been actively participating in innovative and constructive discussions with WTO Members of all sizes—including developing country Members—to hear their concerns and solutions for a better system. 

We are thinking creatively and have come forward with concrete ideas that could promote fairness for all Members.  For example:

• We should make practical and appropriate alternatives to litigation—like good offices, conciliation, and mediation—real options for the entire WTO membership.
• We should ensure that dispute panels address only what is necessary to resolve the disputes.  And any corrections to reports or decisions must be limited to addressing egregious mistakes.
• We should end judicial overreaching and restore policy space so that Members can regulate and find solutions to their pressing needs, such as tackling the climate crisis or defending their workers’ interests from non-market policies.

And we urgently need to correct WTO panel reports that have asserted that the WTO may second-guess Members’ legitimate national security judgements, something none of us ever intended.  This calls into question foundational principles of how far-reaching trade rules should be. 

Everywhere I go, and everyone I meet, I’m taking the opportunity to engage on these issues.

That’s because making this a collaborative process is good for all of us and for the WTO, and we’re glad to be working with our colleagues to bring new ideas to the table.