World Trade Organization members were updated on dispute settlement system reform informal talks during the March 31 meeting of the Dispute Settlement Body, the WTO said. Guatemala's Deputy Permanent Representative to the WTO, Marco Molina he held over 40 bilateral meetings with delegates and regional coordinators representing over 130 WTO nations in February. "An online template was created" so that countries could submit proposals, and 70 have been received to date, the WTO said. Molina said a calendar of meetings up to the first week of July was created, and that members expect to include agreed-to solutions in a "green" table before the summer break, laying a foundation for drafting reform points once members return from the break and concluding at the end of the year.

World Trade Organization members elected New Zealand's Clare Kelly to serve as the new head of the Committee on Regional Trade Agreements. Members at the March 27 meeting also reviewed five existing trade agreements, looking at the EU-U.K. RTA on goods and services, the economic partnership agreement between Eastern and Southern Africa states and the U.K., and the U.K.-Japan comprehensive economic cooperation and partnership agreement; the India-Mauritius CEPA; and the Turkey-Serbia free trade deal, WTO said. The next meeting is set for July 3-4.

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."

World Trade Organization members recently adopted “a range of tools and recommendations” that the body said will improve implementation of the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures. Those recommendations were outlined in two documents adopted by the SPS Committee, including one, G/SPS/67, that lists “existing tools and resources to enhance the implementation” of the SPS agreement for SPS approval procedures for food, animal and plant products, and another, G/SPS/68, that provides recommendations on SPS approval procedures.

World Trade Organization members, during the first in a planned series of "Fish Weeks," laid out the foundation for an agreement on fisheries subsidies to be achieved by the next Ministerial Conference in February 2024, said Einar Gunnarsson, who chaired the March 20-24 talks. The talks were "very successful," Gunnarsson said. He said the next Fish Week, scheduled for April 25-28, will be the "beginning of our discussions of how to get to the result we want." Members also discussed that special and differential treatment will be "an integral part of the negotiations," the WTO said, and made a "general call" to safeguard the livelihood and food security of small fishers.

World Trade Organization members swapped information on existing e-commerce regulatory and legal frameworks during the March 22 meeting of the Work Programme on Electronic Commerce, the WTO said. Members also discussed how the WTO can help implement these frameworks and the challenges associated with establishing them. Singapore introduced its Digital Economy Agreements while the U.K. shared a paper on trade digitalization focused on "how to make legislative and regulatory frameworks on e-commerce more inclusive, transparent and efficient." The work program's next session, set for April 20, will focus on the moratorium on the imposition of e-commerce customs duties.

South Korea on March 23 withdrew its dispute complaint at the World Trade Organization concerning Japanese export restrictions, the WTO said. South Korea launched the dispute against Japan in 2019 to protest Japanese export controls on fluorinated polymide, hydrogen fluoride and resist. Japan announced earlier this month that it will relax these controls following an export control policy dialogue with South Korea (see 2303170015).

The World Trade Organization's published agenda for the Dispute Settlement Body's March 31 meeting includes U.S. status reports on the implementation of DSB recommendations on antidumping measures on certain hot-rolled steel products from Japan; antidumping and countervailing measures on large residential washers from South Korea; certain methodologies and their application to antidumping proceedings involving China; and Section 110(5) of the U.S. Copyright Act. Status reports also are expected from Indonesia on measures related to the import of horticultural products, animals and animal products, and from the EU on measures affecting the approval and marketing of biotech products.

World Trade Organization members on the Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights elected Thailand's Pimchanok Pitfield as chair of the council for the next year during the March 16-17 council meeting, the WTO said. During the meeting, WTO members also discussed whether to extend the TRIPS decision (see 2206170010) to cover COVID-19 diagnostics and therapeutics, a decision that had a deadline in December but which has been pushed back twice and is now scheduled for the next TRIPS council meeting in June. Current council chair Lansana Gberie of Sierra Leone said that members should "plan well in advance if they want to achieve results" in the coming months.

South Korea will withdraw its World Trade Organization complaint over Japan's export controls on fluorinated polymide, hydrogen fluoride and resist following Japan's finding that South Korea enhanced its export control authority, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's announced March 16. METI said it will relax controls over the exports of the three items to South Korea and remind domestic companies it is their responsibility to check the end-users of their products. METI made the announcement following an export control policy dialogue with South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, held March 14-16. The issue stemmed from a years old Japan-South Korea export control dispute, which included Japan removing South Korea from its list of trusted trading partners in 2019 (see 1907010020, 1908080026 and 1910240032).