Australia will pause its World Trade Organization case against China on barley for three months while Beijing reviews its restrictions, Australia announced this week. China placed 80.5% duties on Australian barley in 2020. The parties recently carried out "constructive dialogue at all levels," leading to a three- to four-month reprieve in the WTO case, Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said April 11.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative released its 2023 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, highlighting the most significant foreign market issues U.S. exporters are facing. The report focuses on foreign import policies, technical barriers to trade, intellectual property protection, competition, and more.
The U.K. last week said it “substantially concluded” negotiations to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of the last steps before other CPTPP members “complete domestic ratification procedures” to approve the U.K.’s accession to the deal (see 2210110026). The U.K. also released a document describing benefits the CPTPP will provide British traders, including the elimination of tariffs on more than 99% of U.K. goods exports.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said her team is on "phase three" of its reform talks at the World Trade Organization, saying that phase brings in all WTO members. Tai, speaking during a March 24 House Ways and Means Committee hearing, said her team in Geneva is "bringing written proposals every meeting" with the goal of making "a more functional negotiating forum." The aim is to move WTO dispute settlement away from litigation and toward negotiation, Tai said. She also decried the WTO's recent rulings against the Section 232 national security tariff action, saying they "are deeply concerning to us and to our national security sovereignty."
The EU and Timor-Leste inked a deal wrapping up bilateral market access talks on goods and services as part of Timor-Leste's bid to join the World Trade Organization, the EU Directorate-General for Trade said. The agreement sets lower tariffs for goods and opens up the services market. It will apply to all WTO members when Timor-Leste joins the global trade body. The Southeast Asian nation also is negotiating deals with Indonesia and the U.S. Nations seeking to join the WTO are required to sign bilateral deals with interested WTO members that include both agriculture and tariffs on non-agricultural products, and that also cover some service sectors.
Brazil recently added 937 items and removed 67 items from its list of foreign capital goods and information technology and telecommunications goods subject to duty-free treatment under its Ex-Tarifario regime, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council reported March 24. The 794 added capital goods are classified in Harmonized System chapters 84, 85, 86, 89, 90 and 94. The 143 added IT and telecom goods are classified in chapters 84, 85 and 90. Duty-free treatment lasts through Dec. 31, 2025. The country also established or renewed tariff‑rate quotas on several goods, including certain steel and aluminum sheets, air traffic control antennas and blood pressure measuring devices.
The U.K. Parliament last week approved a trade deal with Australia (see 2202090017 and 2112170016). The deal, which will take effect “after UK processes are complete” and after the two countries agree to a “commencement date,” will remove tariffs on more than 99% of Australian goods exported to the U.K. annually, Australia said.
In more than four hours of questioning during a hearing March 24 before the House Ways and Means Committee, no member of Congress advocated for lessening tariffs on Chinese goods under Section 301, or for reopening exclusions applications.
The U.S. filed its initial written submission March 20 in its second panel under the USMCA trade deal over Canada's dairy tariff-rate quotas, arguing that various elements of Canada's TRQ allocation system "remain fundamentally inconsistent with Canada's USMCA obligations," according to a copy of the submission posted by the International Economic Law and Policy blog.
The U.K. and Ukraine penned a digital trade deal March 20 to extend until March 2024 the removal of tariffs on all Ukrainian products. The deal guarantees Ukraine access to the financial services "crucial for reconstruction efforts through the deal's facilitation of cross-border data flows," while allowing Ukrainian businesses to "trade more efficiently" via electronic transactions, e-signatures and e-contracts, the Department for International Trade said.