Seven World Trade Organization member countries formally accepted the fisheries subsidies agreement on Oct. 23, pushing the number of WTO members to have done so to 51. This number is 46% of the total number needed for the agreement to take effect, the WTO said. In all, Albania, Australia, Botswana, Cuba, Cote d'Ivoire, South Korea and St. Lucia accepted the deal as part of a two-day meeting of senior officials Oct. 23-24 in Geneva. WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, noting that Fiji is expected to accept the deal soon, said the announcement "represents a leap in the right direction."

World Trade Organization members participating in the Information Technology Agreement and the ITA Expansion Agreement on Oct. 19 approved Timor-Leste's bid to participate in the agreements, the WTO announced. As a result, the ITA Schedules will be incorporated into Timor-Leste's WTO goods schedule, making up a part of the nation's "final WTO accession package." Per the ITA commitments, after Timor-Leste joints the WTO, the country will eliminate duties on 242 products, amounting to 64% of its ITA-related tariff lines, the WTO said, and the duties on the remaining 114 ITA products will be scrapped on Jan. 1, 2027. As for the ITA Expansion Agreement, Timor-Leste will drop import duties on 240 of 488 tariff lines upon accession, with another 333 tariff lines reduced to zero after three years.

The World Trade Organization's Committee on Market Access during its Oct. 16-17 meeting discussed ways to revise the committee's functioning and agreed to carry out a thematic session on supply chain resilience in November, the WTO said.

The World Trade Organization's published agenda for the Dispute Settlement Body's Oct. 26 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.

Katrin Kuhlmann, a visiting professor of law at Georgetown University, and Devi Ariyani, the executive director of the Indonesia Service Dialogue Council, both said they hope the World Trade Organization's moratorium on e-commerce duties is extended, during a Peterson Institute for International Economics event on Oct. 18. Although the moratorium has been regularly extended since 1998, a few countries are preparing to introduce tariffs on digitally transferred goods before the moratorium's expiration in March 2024, Cecilia Malmström, a nonresident senior fellow at PIIE, said at the event.

North Macedonia accepted the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Government Procurement, queuing up the deal to enter into force in the country Oct. 30, WTO announced. The agreement will ensure that North Macedonia receives new market access opportunities while liberalizing its own procurement market, WTO said. North Macedonia will become the agreement's 49th member. The deal defines commitments related to procuring entities; the goods, services and construction services now open to foreign competition; the "threshold values above which procurement activities will be open to foreign" bidders; and exceptions to the agreement, WTO said.

World Trade Organization members, meeting Sept. 27-28, swapped views on how to ramp up transparency on other members' agricultural measures. Members of the Committee on Agriculture suggested "streamlining and simplifying the current export subsidy notification requirements" and mulled over a proposal from the committee chair to specifically address transparency, WTO said.

The World Trade Organization will host a virtual event Oct. 11 at 7 a.m. EDT covering trade-facilitating measures pertaining to product rules of origin. Tanzania's Elia Mtweve, current chair of the Committee on Rules of Origin, will open the event, which will discuss "initiatives being implemented to simplify rules of origin and facilitate compliance with origin requirements," WTO announced. Also speaking will be WTO member government representatives, international organization officials and academics.

World Trade Organization members conducted an "informal retreat" at the trade body's headquarters Sept. 25-26 to talk trade and industrial policy as part of a broader reform discussion, the WTO said. The members emerged with three primary themes: "policy space in support of industrialization in developing countries including least developed countries; industrial subsidies -- opportunities and challenges for the global trading system; and the way forward." WTO members' senior officials will meet Oct. 23-24 to hand their negotiators "political direction" ahead of the 13th Ministerial Conference, which is set for Feb. 26-29.

Australia will continue its case at the World Trade Organization against China's tariff treatment of wine imports and reject Beijing's proposal to curtail the issue to China's case against Australia's treatment of steel products. Australian Agriculture Minister Murray Watt told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the government sees the cases as "entirely separate matters."