TRADE DEALS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WTO: “President Donald Trump’s chief trade adviser issued his first detailed criticism of the World Trade Organization Monday [12-11-17], blasting the global commercial arbiter for ‘losing its essential focus’ and becoming ‘a litigation-centered organization’ that has failed to pay sufficient attention to enforcing existing rules.
While U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer didn’t mention China by name, he made Beijing a clear target in his speech to fellow trade ministers of the 164-member body at its biannual meeting this week in Argentina.
Mr. Lighthizer said he felt the Geneva-based organization needed to focus its agenda on Chinese economic practices that critics often blame for giving the country unfair advantages and for prompting its companies to flood global markets with cheap exports. WTO rule-making committees, Mr. Lighthizer said, should tackle new challenges such as ‘chronic overcapacity and the influence of state-owned enterprises.’
Messrs. Lighthizer and Trump have both long been critics of the WTO, accusing it of treating the U.S. unfairly in many legal cases, for infringing on American sovereignty, and for failing to address the challenges from China’s hybrid communist-capitalist mercantilist system.
But the two have so far said very little about how, if at all, the U.S. would translate that disaffection into a new American policy toward the WTO, which enjoyed stronger support from Mr. Trump’s predecessors.”
-Jacob M. Sclesinger, “Trump Trade Representative Attacks WTO for ‘Losing Focus’,” The Wall Street Journal online, Dec. 11, 2017 12:39pm