Senators said that officials from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative failed to consult properly before a proposal to make changes to the TRIPS Agreement regarding coronavirus vaccines was released, and that the agency's approach needs to change. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and ranking member Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, led a letter, which said: "Administrations of both parties have struggled to comply with the terms Congress has provided to ensure its views are reflected in our trade policy. Accordingly, we request that you take steps to ensure Congress is a full partner in the Administration’s ongoing trade negotiations, regardless of whether the Administration believes any eventual agreement from such negotiations will require formal Congressional approval. To that end, the Office of the United States Trade Representative ... must provide Congress with timely, substantive briefings on negotiations and share all U.S. negotiating texts before the Administration commits the United States to a particular negotiating position or outcome."

China, in a May 10 General Council meeting at the World Trade Organization, announced its position on the text from the EU, India, South Africa and the U.S. over the intellectual property waiver for COVID-19-related goods, the WTO said. The world's second-largest economy said it won't seek to use the benefits of the text, which simplifies how governments can override patent rights for COVID-19 products, unless language is used to provide the waiver benefits to all developing members. China also encouraged countries with the capacity to export vaccines to opt out. China also rejected a second option in the plan that would restrict waiver eligibility to the developing countries that exported more than 10% of the globe's 2021 vaccine doses, the WTO said May 10.

Lansana Gberie of Sierra Leone, the new chair of the World Trade Organization's Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, shared a draft of the contentious COVID-19 intellectual property waiver, the WTO announced May 3. The draft, which came following informal talks with the four leading negotiators -- the EU, India, South Africa and the U.S. -- would allow WTO members to skirt IP restrictions for goods pertaining to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Under the proposal, WTO members would be able to issue a single authorization to use all patents needed to make a COVID-19 vaccine and waive the requirement that authorized use of such a vaccine be predominantly to supply the domestic market, making exports of such goods legal in order to ensure equitable access by eligible members to the COVID-19 vaccine covered by the authorization. However, reasonable efforts would have to be made to quash efforts to re-export the vaccines that entered the member countries under the decision, the report said. The proposal will now be considered by all 164 WTO members.

Turkey started arbitration proceedings with the EU over Turkey's measures on the production, import and marketing of pharmaceutical products, the World Trade Organization said April 28. The proceedings were established under the Dispute Settlement Understanding to review the findings of a WTO dispute panel on the Turkish measures. The report found that Turkey has set up a system to prioritize domestic pharmaceutical products over like imported products in its review of applications for market authorization, which the panel concluded is "inconsistent with" the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The WTO said Turkey and the EU agreed on procedures for arbitration to "decide any appeal from any final report."

The U.S. and other World Trade Organization members called out China yet again for failing to fully submit its subsidies to the WTO during the April 26-27 meeting of the Committee on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, a person with knowledge of the meetings told reporters in an email. The U.S. pointed out that after examining certain financial statements of certain fossil fuel companies in China, it found that the Chinese government granted financial grants totaling over $1.9 billion in 2020 that were not reported to the WTO. Apart from asking China to clarify why these grants were not reported, the U.S. also asked China to clarify whether distant water fishing enterprises are completely tax exempt. In response, China asked the U.S. to look at its relevant enterprise income tax law provisions, which the U.S. found uninstructive. Also during the meeting, other WTO members -- namely, Brazil, Morocco, China and Russia -- brought up complaints about U.S. countervailing duty action. In particular, China blasted the U.S.'s "abusive use" of "adverse facts available" in CVD cases, while Russia said the U.S. continued to use flawed practices resulting in the finding of subsidies where none exist.

World Trade Organization members affirmed their commitment to engage in discussions over its dispute settlement system at the April 27 meeting of the Dispute Settlement Body, the WTO said. The biggest point of contention concerns appointments to the WTO's Appellate Body. The U.S., which has long blocked appointments to the body, hindering its ability to function, said it doesn't support the current proposal to begin appointing members to the Appellate Body.

The World Trade Organization's 12th Ministerial Conference is officially set to take place June 12-15 at the WTO headquarters in Geneva, the WTO announced. The ministerial has been rescheduled multiple times due to COVID-19 travel restrictions.

The World Trade Organization published the agenda for the April 27 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 is also 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. Further, numerous countries, excluding the U.S., will propose nominations for a list of governmental and nongovernmental panelists to serve on the DSB.

The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, U.N. World Food Program and the World Trade Organization called for coordinated action to address growing food security threats in an April 13 joint statement. As a response to the looming crisis, the heads of the organizations proposed providing emergency food supplies and financial support, facilitating "unhindered trade," and investing in sustainable food production.

A World Trade Organization panel came back with conclusions in a case over sanitary and phytosanitary measures imposed by Costa Rica on Mexican avocados, finding that the measures violate aspects of the WTO's Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures agreement. The case concerns five phytosanitary regulations that Mexico identified as being in violation of the agreement.