A week before U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai heads to Geneva for the World Trade Organization's ministerial conference, she said she's excited for what the meeting could bring, though she avoided predicting that either an intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines would be approved, or that the 20-year fisheries negotiations would be closed.

World Trade Organization members adopted two panel reports at the May 31 meeting of the Dispute Settlement Body, the WTO said May 31. The reports concern Mexico's challenge to Costa Rica's restrictions on fresh avocado imports from Mexico and Turkey's challenge to the EU's safeguard measure restricting certain steel product imports. Neither report is being appealed to the defunct Appellate Body.

The World Trade Organization published the agenda for the May 31 meeting of the Dispute Settlement Body. It includes U.S. status reports on the implementation of recommendations adopted by the DSB on the following: 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.

Almost 90 trade associations, including the U.S. Council for International Business and the Semiconductor Industry Association, released a statement May 17 urging World Trade Organization members to renew the moratorium on customs duties on electronic transmissions until the next ministerial conference. The trade associations said that continuing the moratorium is key to the COVID-19 recovery and to "supply chain resilience for manufacturing and services industries in the COVID-19 era." Lifting the moratorium would jeopardize all of these benefits since it would disrupt cross-border access to knowledge and digital tools, the statement said.

Since the last World Trade Organization Committee on Customs Valuation meeting, Bolivia and Georgia have submitted new notifications about their customs legislation, the WTO announced. Relaying the details of the May 17 committee meeting, the WTO said members also reviewed notifications of national customs legislation. Bolivia's and Georgia's updated legislation was noticed in the committee's status of notifications of national legislation on customs valuations. The next committee meeting is Oct. 24.

The World Trade Organization released a new data portal to allow access to databases on "trade in goods, services, dispute settlement, environmental measures, trade-related intellectual property rights and more," the WTO announced May 17. One such database is the "WTO Stats portal," which allows access to time series statistics on trade in goods and services on an annual, quarterly and monthly basis as well as market access indicators that give key information on governments' bound, applied and preferential tariff rates.

A group of tech industry associations released a statement May 16 to voice their support for an expansion of the Information Technology Agreement at the World Trade Organization. An expansion would see emerging technologies covered by the tariff-elimination elements of the pact and extend to areas of the globe not currently covered by the ITA, the statement said. Citing a study from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the trade associations said that expanding the ITA would add almost $800 billion to global GDP over the next decade.

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.