The WTO Dispute Settlement Body Friday established a panel to hear Russia’s challenge to the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, while China and Türkiye delayed action on a panel ruling involving Chinese electric vehicles and WTO members failed for the 100th time to begin filling vacancies on the Appellate Body.

The WTO’s findings put an economic cost on the failure to update global trade rules as subsidies, national security restrictions, and digital commerce reshape trade. It frames the stakes for reform: stronger cooperation could raise global GDP by 2.9% by 2050, while a system divided into geopolitical blocs could lower it by 5.1%, relative to the baseline.

The September 28 meeting will test whether WTO members can narrow their differences over who should qualify for special and differential treatment and how that treatment should be applied. The discussions will also examine how to preserve policy space for industrialization while maintaining compliance with WTO rules, with the aim of identifying concrete areas for further reform work.

The facilitator overseeing the World Trade Organization’s reform discussions on level playing field issues has scheduled a meeting for September 24, with transparency, notifications and compliance proposed as the starting point.

The facilitator overseeing the World Trade Organization’s reform discussions on decision-making will convene an informal meeting on September 22 to seek members’ views on the essential features of the WTO’s consensus-based process and proposals to improve it.

The review will help shape USTR’s annual report to Congress at a time of continuing concern about Chinese subsidies, state-owned enterprises, intellectual-property protection and barriers facing foreign companies. Comments are due Sept. 17, with a public hearing scheduled for Sept. 30.

The report exposes deep divisions over WTO reform, with many developing countries prioritizing existing mandates and structural imbalances while industrialized economies press for new rules on development status, subsidies and decision-making.

The clash highlights a widening divide over the future of the WTO: While most members want to restore a binding, two-tier dispute settlement system, the United States and several other industrialized countries are seeking to keep those negotiations separate from the broader reform process.

The divide between major industrialized and developing countries over World Trade Organization reform persisted Wednesday as members debated what constitutes a level playing field and which issues should fall within the scope of the discussions.

Developing countries challenge the reform process, while Korea and other proponents press for plurilateral rulemaking ahead of MC15.

India is challenging the legal and institutional basis of the WTO Agreement on Electronic Commerce, asking participants to provide written answers before the July 14 General Council meeting. New Delhi asked participants to explain how the plurilateral deal can operate without Annex 4 consensus.

The United States, the European Union and several other industrialized members are pressing for World Trade Organization reform discussions to focus exclusively on written submissions, excluding oral interventions by members, according to people familiar with the talks. Developing and least-developed countries argue that such an approach would impose additional burdens on members already facing resource and capacity constraints.

The chair of the World Trade Organization’s General Council has brought greater transparency and inclusiveness to WTO reform discussions now underway under the council’s oversight, according to people familiar with the developments.

World Trade Organization reform discussions on development, decision-making and “foundational issues” have resumed, although members remain divided. Despite the lack of consensus and the absence of a ministerial mandate from the 14th Ministerial Conference earlier this year, members are restarting the discussions with expectations of a different outcome under the same material conditions, according to people familiar with the developments.

China has floated a paper on how work at the World Trade Organization could support trade and investment integration, “thereby advancing industrialization,” in the Committee on Trade and Development.

The new chair of the World Trade Organization’s General Council said last week that her consultations with members since the failed 14th Ministerial Conference have produced no progress on …

China and several major trading partners clashed again this week in the WTO Subsidies and Countervailing Measures Committee over claims that Chinese industrial subsidies are fueling global overcapacity, distorting markets and triggering a wider turn to unilateral trade remedies.

Ahead of the World Trade Organization’s General Council meeting May 6, Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is struggling to come to terms with the failed 14th Ministerial Conference – an outcome …

World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala expressed confidence Tuesday that members will be able to reach an agreement to extend the prohibition on duties for electronic commerce transactions, but said it's better not to put a deadline on the negotiations.

US Trade Representative Jamison Greer says he returned from the World Trade Organization's 14th ministerial conference convinced that the WTO "isn't a serious forum."