Tax credits for electric vehicles made in North America -- an element of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act -- deals a "body-blow" to the World Trade Organization beyond anything doled out under the previous administration, John Magnus, president of Tradewins, said in a post on the International Economic Law and Policy Blog. The tax credit "clearly signals" that the government does not weigh WTO-consistency when making policy decisions, and anyone concerned about the legitimacy of the world's largest multilateral trade organization should be concerned since the U.S. widened the prospect of flouting the WTO's rules, the blog post said.

The Sept. 22 meeting of World Trade Organization's Committee on Regional Trade Agreements focused on five RTAs, the WTO said. South Korea's Taeho Lee, the committee's chair, called on members to ramp up efforts to provide outstanding data and comments for presentations of RTAs and to look into how the committee's work could be improved as part of efforts to reform the WTO.

The bid to seat members on the World Trade Organization's Appellate Body has a new member: St. Kitts and Nevis. The Caribbean nation has become the latest to join the co-sponsors looking to start the process for filling openings at the WTO's highest dispute settlement body -- a move the U.S. has unilaterally prevented since 2016, a Geneva-based trade official said. Joining the process at the Sept. 23 meeting of the Dispute Settlement Body, St. Kitts and Nevis became part of the 58th time a proposal to fill the Appellate Body brought by a group of 127 WTO members was blocked. The U.S. again said that it does not support the decision to get the body back up and running, citing its concerns with the institution and the lack of reform. Antigua and Barbuda noted St. Kitts and Nevis' addition to the coalition opposing the U.S.'s action and declared that their goal is for all Organization of Eastern Caribbean States members to join as co-sponsors. The next DSB meeting is set for Oct. 26.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said she had an informal dialogue about the World Trade Organization dispute settlement system with representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, India and South Africa. Tai was in Bali, Indonesia, for a G-20 trade ministers meeting, and the discussion happened on the sidelines of that meeting.

The World Trade Organization held phase two of its Advanced Agriculture Notification Workshop Sept. 13-16 to help members fulfill their agricultural notification obligations under the Agriculture Agreement, the WTO said. The meetings covered issues involving market access and the implementation of the Bali Decision on tariff quota administration and the Committee on Agriculture's Review Process.

For the first time since the establishment of the World Trade Organization, the U.S. in 2021 was neither a complaining party nor named a respondent in a new dispute, the International Trade Commission said in its Year in Trade 2021 annual report. The report, subtitled "Operation of the Trade Agreements Program," further said that during 2021, WTO members filed nine new dispute settlement consultation requests, up from five in 2020, though still the second-lowest mark for any year since the start of the WTO in 1995. The disputes were filed by eight WTO members: Costa Rica, Malaysia, Japan, Australia, China, the EU, Saudi Arabia and Brazil. Costa Rica filed two disputes. Other elements of the ITC's report touch on U.S. concerns about the WTO dispute settlement system and panels set up in 2021 that involve the U.S.

The World Trade Organization published the agenda for the Sept. 23 meeting of the Dispute Settlement Body. It includes U.S. status reports on the implementation of recommendations adopted by the DSB 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. A status report also is expected from Indonesia on measures relating to the import of horticultural products, animals and animal products, and from the EU on measures affecting the approval and marketing of biotech products.

The EU is looking into whether the protectionist items in the recently passed U.S. Inflation Reduction Act violate World Trade Organization rules, EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told Bloomberg, the publication reported Sept. 10. The IRA -- a $437 billion tax, health and climate bill -- included provisions to boost North American production of electric cars, providing tax credits for electric vehicles made in North America. After a few years, the credits will only available to vehicles with advanced batteries that cut China out of their supply chains, and where the majority of the battery's value is from North America. Dombrovskis expressed concern over these measures along with the IRA's broader preference for U.S. manufacturing when it comes to government procurement.

Appeals at the World Trade Organization do not have to "go into the 'void,'" even though the Appellate Body has gone the way of Seeso and the dodo bird, Simon Lester, former legal affairs officer at the WTO's Appellate Body, said in a blog post. Instead, Lester put forth another option: the WTO member party to the dispute could put the dispute panel report on the WTO Dispute Settlement Body agenda for adoption after the 90-day appellate period has run its course. This route would read the WTO's rules to find that the appeal has been completed.

World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said a mix of factors will continue to dog the health of international trade and the global economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Speaking to Bloomberg News this week at the Africa Adaptation Summit in the Netherlands, Okonjo-Iweala said Russia's war in Ukraine, bottlenecks plaguing shipping routes, China's "Covid Zero" pandemic-fighting measures and extreme weather events present great challenges to the recovery.