July 8, 2021 — The World Trade Organization hosts talks next week aimed at reaching a deal to cap subsidies that contribute to the overfishing of the world’s seas and oceans.
Prospects for a breakthrough appear dim. WTO delegates have been negotiating for 20 years and only last December agreed on the definition of “fish”.
The WTO’s new director general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has said a deal is a top priority but she has also expressed doubts about a July conclusion.
June 16, 2021 — The United States and the European Union have resolved a trade dispute that had resulted in a ramping up of tariffs, including on some seafood products.
The quarrel, dating back to 2004, centered around subsidies for European airplane-maker Airbus and U.S. plane manufacturer Boeing. The dispute was brought before the World Trade Organization, which ruled in October 2020 that each side could impose billions of dollars in tariffs.
May 27, 2021 — The U.S. asked the World Trade Organization’s members to address the problem of forced labor on fishing vessels, seeking the issue to form part of ongoing talks to curb subsidies in the industry.
The U.S. proposal also calls for WTO members’ explicit recognition of the forced-labor problem and proposes additional transparency with respect to those vessels or operators that use forced labor, the U.S. Trade Representative said in a statement Wednesday.
“Forced labor harms the lives and well-being of fishers and workers around the world and it must be eliminated,” U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in the statement.
Global leaders in 2015 tasked the WTO with ending excessive and illegal fishing through eliminating government subsidies that spur companies to deplete the world’s fish stocks and threaten coastal economies. Negotiators have failed to reach an agreement.
WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has made the issue her top priority, and plans a July conference that could help seal an international accord.
May 26, 2021 — Lobsters, wine, and chocolate imported into the United Kingdom from the United States could face new tariffs under proposals from the U.K. government to rebalance the list of goods it targets as part of the ongoing trade conflict around steel and aluminum.
The administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump introduced 25 percent and 10 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, citing national security concerns, prompting retaliatory measures from the European Union on goods such as motorcycles, whiskey, and tobacco.
May 11, 2021 — The head of the World Trade Organization plans to host a ministerial meeting on July 15 where she hopes an agreement can be reached on cutting fisheries subsidies after 20 years of talks, a document showed on Monday.
Governments including major subsidisers China, the European Union and Japan spend billions of dollars a year to prop up their fishing fleets, contributing to over-fishing that is decimating wild stocks. The WTO was tasked by world leaders in 2015 with striking a deal to roll them back but missed a key deadline last year. read more
Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who took charge of the global trade watchdog in March, has made fisheries a top priority and urged ministers in an invitation letter seen by Reuters “to find the common resolve and spirit of compromise that the WTO needs to bring these twenty-year-plus negotiations to a successful conclusion at this meeting”.
Intensive negotiations will continue in Geneva with the chair of the talks, Santiago Wills, expected to issue a fourth version of the draft agreement this week.
April 28, 2021 — The world’s most important trade negotiation this year centers on a deal aimed at saving the world’s fisheries.
Back in 2015, global leaders tasked the World Trade Organization with ending excessive and illegal fishing. The idea was to eliminate government subsidies that incentivize companies to deplete the world’s fish stocks and threaten coastal economies.
But year after year, deadline after broken deadline, WTO negotiators failed to secure such an agreement.
This year it sounds different.
“It’s like a watershed year — we have to deliver some successes,” WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said Monday at a European Commission trade conference. She then recited her 2021 agenda with a fisheries deal atop the list.
A failure to conclude a fisheries deal would show that the WTO lacks credibility and is incapable tackling the more pressing problems of the modern global trading system. Okonjo-Iweala sees it as a way to signal to the world that the WTO is back.
There’s one big problem.
China, India and other developing nations are more focused on carving out exemptions than agreeing to enforceable disciplines that would help foster the sustainability of the world’s fish stocks.
April 19, 2021 — The head of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has suggested difficult talks on ending harmful fishery subsidies should be concluded by July.
In an effort to inject some urgency to the talks, WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala pleaded with negotiators in Geneva, Switzerland, to maintain a sense of urgency.
April 12, 2021 — Ongoing World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations on a deal to curtail harmful fishing subsidies are stumbling over the issue of carve-outs for the artisanal fisheries of developing nations.
Exemptions for small, coastal fishing operations have been a thorny issue impeding progress on a deal over the last several months.
March 2, 2021 — The new head of the World Trade Organization called Monday for a “technology transfer” when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines and urged member nations to reach a deal to reduce overfishing after years of fruitless talks as she laid out her top priorities after taking office.
Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian economist and former government minister, donned a mask and doled out welcoming elbow bumps as she took up her job at WTO headquarters on the banks of Lake Geneva. Still, she immediately set about trying to change the organization’s culture.
“It cannot be business as usual. We have to change our approach from debate and rounds of questions to delivering results,” she told ambassadors and other top government envoys that make up the 164-member body’s General Council.
“The world is leaving the WTO behind. Leaders and decision-makers are impatient for change,” she said, noting several trade ministers had told her that “if things don’t change,” they would not attend the WTO’s biggest event — a ministerial meeting — “because it is a waste of their time.”
Okonjo-Iweala, 66, is both the first woman and the first African to serve as the WTO’s director-general. Her brisk comments were a departure from the more cautious approach of her predecessor, Roberto Azevedo, who resigned on Aug. 31 — a year before the end of his term.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Boston Globe
March 2, 2021 — The new director-general of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has emphasized her commitment to getting a deal done on ending fishery subsidies.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a trained economist and former government minister in Nigeria, was appointed as WTO director-general in February.