European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom urged the US to join WTO reforms today. She pointed to the joint proposals with 11 other countries on reform of the appellate body released yesterday. And she told the US, “Lots of countries in the world are backing this. So please come, sit down and talk to us. That they haven’t done so far. Will that happen? Who knows.”
Also, Malmstrom emphasized “If we don’t reform this in the WTO – and we do not expect China to just sign on the dotted line here and agree, but to engage – there will be others setting a level playing field outside the WTO and I’m not sure that is beneficial for China or the rest of the world.”
On Trump-Xi meeting later this week, she said “It would be good for the whole world if they de-escalated a little bit”. And, “Then somehow it will have to be, possibly not in Buenos Aires but at some time, they will have to negotiate some way forward and we might not like those results, but I can’t speculate on that.”
