The World Trade Organization's Dispute Settlement Body's June 15 meeting will focus on a joint request by the EU and India for a decision on India's tariff treatment of information and communications technology products, according to the agenda. A dispute panel released its report on this spat in April, finding that India's tariffs violated the nation's WTO tariff commitments under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and Article II of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (see 2304170018).

The World Trade Organization is steadily headed towards irrelevancy to global trade and is facing a "long, slow sunset," said Peter Harrell, former senior director for international economics and competitiveness at the White House, during remarks at the Georgetown International Trade Update on June 13.

Nigeria formally adopted the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies, making it the ninth World Trade Organization member to accept the deal, the WTO announced. A two-thirds majority is needed for the fisheries deal to officially come into effect.

World Trade Organization members decided on new chairpersons for the 14 subsidiary bodies reporting to the Council for Trade in Goods, the WTO announced. The new chairpersons include Turkey's Aysegul Sahinoglu Yerdes for the Committee on Anti-dumping Practices, New Zealand's James Lester for the Committee on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, Finland's Anna Vitie for the Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade and Norway's Kjetil Tysdal for the Committee on Agriculture.

The World Trade Organization released a new Global Trade Portal, allowing users to access real-time trade data, monitor supply chain activities and provide warning of potential disruptions. The portal launched May 31 along with "new dashboards on seaborne trade in wheat and other grains and oil seeds aimed at improving market transparency at a time of food insecurity," the WTO said May 31. The portal will provide "real-time insights" into maritime grain trade based on data from analytics platform Kpler and "visualization tools based on WTO trade statistics and tariff data." The interactive grain and oilseeds dashboard will update every three hours to show short-term trade trends across various agricultural products.

The World Trade Organization's Dispute Settlement Body agreed to Indonesia's second bid for a dispute panel on the EU's antidumping and countervailing duties on stainless steel cold-rolled flat products from Indonesia at the May 30 DSB meeting, a Geneva-based trade official emailed reporters this week. Indonesia's first request was denied at a past DSB meeting, prompting the second bid in which the nation said it is entitled to protect its national interests.

Participants in the World Trade Organization's Dialogue on Plastics Pollution and Environmentally Sustainable Plastics Trade made "substantial progress" at their May 25 meeting, introducing a draft vision on future negotiations and "elements for a potential outcome at the 13th Ministerial Conference" set to be held in February, the WTO announced. The document "sets out a range of shared principles and priorities for collective actions, with the aim of effectively addressing this challenge" of plastics pollution, the WTO said.

The International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization launched a Joint Subsidy Platform to "enhance transparency on the use of subsidies," the WTO announced last week. The platform will help users access information on the nature, size and impact of subsidies with a goal of aiding dialogue on their use and design. The heads of all four organizations issued a joint statement saying governments "should not use subsidies to provide a competitive advantage to domestic industry and should seek to minimize the cost and distorting effects on trading partners. Doing this effectively, however, will require building a more common understanding across governments on the appropriate uses and design of subsidies."

The EU adopted the World Trade Organization fisheries subsidies agreement, the European Council announced May 25. The deal prohibits subsidies contributing to illegal and unreported fishing, bars subsidies for fishing on the unregulated high seas and imposes sustainability rules for subsidies in relation to the most vulnerable, overfished stocks. The U.S., Canada, Iceland, Seychelles, Singapore, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates previously accepted the agreement, which was reached at the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference in June (see 2305160015). The trade body requires a two-thirds threshold for the agreement to come into effect.

India will appeal a World Trade Organization panel report in a case brought by Japan on India's tariff treatment of various information technology products, the WTO announced. But because of the U.S. refusal to seat members on the Appellate Body, the case will stall pending any change in the AB's situation. In the case, the panel said that India's duties violated the WTO tariff commitments under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and Article II of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (see 2304170018).