The WTO announced that WTO members adopted Seychelles’ WTO terms of entry at the General Council meeting on 10 December 2014. Seychelles will have until 1 June 2015 to ratify the deal to formally become a WTO member 30 days after it notifies the ratification to the WTO Director-General. Once the accession procedure is completed, the Seychelles will become the 161st member of the WTO. Seychelles originally applied for WTO membership in 1995 and the…
On 11 December 2014, the European Commission Trade Newsletter – Weekly Digest reported that: Negotiations for an Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA) are gaining full speed with the third round taking place 1-5 December in Geneva. The 14 members of the WTO who launched these talks in July met last week to focus on products and technologies that can reduce noise and vibration, improve the quality of water and ensure efficient and environmentally sound waste water…
On 27 November 2014, WTO announced that the General Council voted on and approved the following draft agreements approved in Bali: • the draft Decision on Public Stockholding for Food Security Purposes, contained in document WT/GC/W/688;• the draft Decision on the Protocol of Amendment to insert the Trade Facilitation Agreement into Annex 1A of the WTO Agreement, contained in document WT/PCTF/W/28; and• the draft Decision on Post-Bali work, contained in document WT/GC/W/690. The vote puts the WTO…
On 10 November 2014, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced that at the APEC leaders meeting, President Obama announced that the United States and the People’s Republic of China had reached an understanding on a bilateral agreement on expanding the scope of goods covered by the Information Technology Agreement (ITA). This agreement paves the way for the resumption and swift conclusion of the first major tariff-cutting deal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 17…
On 13 November 2014, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) announced that the United States and India reached agreement on a set of measures intended to break the impasse in the work of the WTO to implement the agreements reached last December at the WTO Ministerial in Bali.According to the announcement, the agreement, which will be presented for consideration by the full WTO membership in the near future, consists of two key elements: • U.S. and India…
On 1 October 2014, the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade announced that, after more than a decade of dispute, Brazil and the United States signed in Washington, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) terminating the cotton litigation WTO (DS267). Initiated by Brazil in 2002, the dispute involved domestic subsidies granted by the United States to its cotton producers, as well as programs of export credit guarantees, considered incompatible with the Agreement on Agriculture and…
The European Commission’s EU Trade Newsletter of 2 October 2014, reported that on 22-26 September, the EU and 13 other members of the World Trade Organization participated in the second round of the green goods negotiations (liberalising trade in environmental goods and services) in Geneva. The objective of this initiative was to make it easier to trade green goods internationally.The following countries are taking part: Australia, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Chinese Taipei, the European Union,…
On 19 September 2014, the European Commission announced that the next round of plurilateral negotiations for the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) would start on Sunday 21 September in Geneva. TiSA is a trade agreement currently being negotiated by 23 members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), including the EU. Together, these countries account for 70% of world trade in services. TiSA is based on the WTO’s General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), which…
On 10 September 2014, the WTO announced that a new mediation procedure to help members settle their differences on food safety and animal and plant health measures has officially been agreed since no objections were raised by the 5 September 2014 deadline. The announcement states: The voluntary procedure (document G/SPS/61) was agreed subject to confirmation (“ad referendum”) in the 9–10 July 2014 meeting of the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) Committee, with members given until 5…
On September 4, 2014, the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture, published in the Federal Register a notice announcing the establishment of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 (October 1, 2014–September 30, 2015) in-quota aggregate quantity of raw cane sugar at 1,117,195 metric tons raw value (MTRV). This is the minimum amount to which the United States is committed under the WTO Uruguay Round Agreements. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is…