Attendance at WTO meetings
There are about 50 Committees and Working Parties conducting the business of the WTO and, in the process, these bodies hold in excess of 1000 formal and informal meetings each year. The staff of our Mission in Geneva have been actively participating in the majority of these meetings since its establishment in March 2002. Special attention is paid to such important procedures and mechanisms as the General Council, Trade Policy Reviews, China’s Transitional Review Mechanism and the Doha Round of negotiations.
General Council
The Ministerial Conference is officially the highest body of the WTO. As these Ministerial Conferences are held on average only once every two years, it is the General Council that oversees and carries out the regular functions and operations of the WTO during the intervals in between. The General Council is composed of the permanent representatives of all the WTO Members. Its Chairperson is selected annually from among these representatives to serve for a term of just one year. The General Council meets once every two to three months to report on and discuss progress on important WTO issues. In line with the WTO Agreement, the General Council also convenes as appropriate to discharge the responsibilities of the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) and Trade Policy Review Body (TPRB) . (DSB and TPRB operate separately with their own chairpersons and rules of procedures.)are also regarded as being under the umbrella of the General Council, but in another form. In the current Doha Round of negotiations, the Chairs of the General Council and the Trade Negotiation Committee (usually the Director-General of the WTO Secretariat) play important roles in pushing forward and maintaining the momentum of the negotiations.
Trade Policy Review mechanism
The objective of the WTO’s Trade Policy Review mechanism is to examine the impact on the multilateral trading system of each Member’s trade policy and legislative measures. The two-day review is designed to increase the transparency of a Member’s regulatory regime and make it easy to understand, to ensure that Members abide by their commitments under the multilateral and plurilateral rules, and to facilitate the smooth operation of the multilateral trading system. The schedule for a Member to undergo such a review is every two, four or six years, depending on the percentage of total world trade that the Member’s trade accounts for, and its level of development. Our review are currently scheduled to take place every four years. Since 2002, our Mission has been an active participant in the majority of Trade Policy Reviews, having submitted many written questions reflecting the commercial interests of our industries, and learnt much about other Members’ trade policies in return.
China’s transitional review mechanism
In line with Article 18 of China’s accession protocol, the General Council and its subsidiary bodies should review progress on China’s implementation of its accession commitments every year for the first ten years following its accession. This is called a Transitional Review Mechanism (TRM). These reviews could be discontinued after eight years by means of a joint decision by Members. Through this mechanism, we have been able to question China on many issues, ranging from anti-dumping, safeguards, customs valuation and financial services, to technical barriers to trade (TBT) and sanitary and phytosanitary measures (SPS).
Participation in the development of core negotiation issues
WTO Members differ widely from each other, both in terms of the levels of development they have reached and also their economic structures. So, Members tend to seek out suitable cooperative partners on the different negotiating issues, rather than necessarily stay with one particular position or one particularly cooperative Member on all issues. We have been making special efforts to form alliances with Members having similar positions to us on certain issues in order to extend our influence, and we have been quite successful in this respect.
For example, we are now the coordinating Member for the group of Recently Acceded Members (RAMs). We are also active participatants in as many as 19 informal issue-oriented “Friends” groups, on subjects such as Anti-dumping (FANs), non-tariff measures in NAMA negotiations, non-trade concerns in agriculture negotiations, a multilateral notification and registration system for wine and spirits in the TRIPS negotiations, e-commerce, computer services, maritime services, telecom services, legal services, audiovisual services, domestic regulation, movement of natural persons, environmental services, energy services, trade and environment negotiations, investment issues, competition issues, the Singapore issues, and the modification of the Dispute Settlement Understanding. These groups provide the opportunity to form alliances with like-minded Members, and thus to co-lead developments on these issues from a position of greater strength.
Help to eliminate discriminatory trade measures imposed by other countries
In 1999, Argentina and Poland adopted trade-restrictive measures targeted at our textile products, at a time when we were not yet a Member of the WTO and the two countries were therefore under no obligation to apply WTO-consistent measures against us. On our accession to WTO membership in 2002, we requested that these two countries comply with WTO requirements and eliminate these measures altogether within a period of one year, or provide us with their plan for progressive elimination within a six month period. Following our request, the measures were abolished by the end of 2002.
In October 2002, Brazil informed us that they intended to apply transitional safeguard measures to our textiles and those of Korea. Both sides held consultations in Geneva in December 2002. Originally, Brazil intended that we should be given the same treatment as they gave to Korea. After consulting with our domestic industries, we decided not to agree with Brazil’s offer and announced that we would appeal to the WTO to examine the consistency of Brazil’s measures with WTO rules. In February 2003, Brazil informed our Mission that instead of giving us the same treatment as Korea, it would eliminate the quota restriction earlier than originally planned. Both sides were then able to reach agreement on this matter.
In March 2003, the United States announced the adoption of safeguard measures applied to our steel products. In order to protect the interests of our industries, we requested bilateral consultations with the US in accordance with Article 12.3 of the Agreement on Safeguards. After these failed to reach a satisfactory conclusion, we then requested further consultations under the Dispute Settlement Body and embarked on further meetings to try to solve the matter.
Interaction with China’s delegation under the WTO framework
In May 2005, China adopted provisional safeguard measures on 48 steel products. In November of the same year, it adopted formal safeguard measures on 5 of these. However, China did not implement its notification obligations under the WTO’s Agreement on Safeguards, declaring that cross-straits trade is a “domestic affair” and does not need to be reported to the WTO. Our Mission, on instructions from the capital, complained several times to both China and the WTO Committee on Safeguards regarding this matter. China finally met with our Mission to discuss the issue on 2 December, as equal WTO Members. Though no agreement was reached at that meeting, both sides were at least able to discuss the subject matter professionally and frankly. This was the first time that both sides have interacted officially under the WTO framework. Then, in May 2003, the Chinese delegation formally informed us of the preliminary results of its antidumping investigation of two of the products, in accordance with WTO rules. This shows that we are gradually managing to interact on an equal basis with the China’s delegation under the WTO framework.
Future outlook
Active participation in the Doha negotiations
The Doha Round of trade negotiations covers agriculture, non-agricultural products market access (NAMA), services, rules, trade and environment, the dispute settlement mechanism, a multilateral register of geographical indications (GIs) for wine and spirits, and special and differential treatment (SDT) for developing and least-developing countries (LDCs). Among thse, agriculture, NAMA and services are of the highest importance, and the most closely related to our own trade interests.
Agriculture
The new round of agriculture negotiations started in the year 2000. Though we were still an observer at that time, many of our domestic agencies were actively participating in the negotiations and performing policy analyses on different negotiating proposals. After becoming a WTO Member in January 2002, capital officials and our Mission in Geneva have been closely involved in the negotiations ever since. At the same time as communicating our position on issues such as market access, domestic support and non-trade concerns, we are also actively seeking alliances with like-minded Members. As the Doha Round Negotiations are so closely related to the development of our own agriculture industry, the WTO Mission will continue to keep a careful watch on the progress of the negotiations and provide timely information to the capital. Furthermore, we will work with relevant authorities, such as the Council of Agriculture, in order to cooperate with other Members, and to pursue the interests and expectations of our agriculture industry.
Non-agricultural market access (NAMA)
These negotiations aim to reduce tariff and non-tariff trade barriers on non-agricultural products. As this is an area of great importance to the expansion of our exports, we have been an extremely active participant in these negotiations since becoming a WTO Member. Our basic position is that when we push for the liberalization of a global market, we must limit the impact on our sensitive domestic industries to as little as possible. We will continue to work with Members taking a similar position to us, in order to gain maximum benefit.
Services
In this round of services negotiations, Members are discussing not only market access but also regulatory issues related to reducing the barriers to trade in services. For example, through their assessment of trade in services, Members have been able to demonstrate the economic benefits resulting from the liberalization of services industries. Members have been conducting negotiations on the rules of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in order to facilitate the opening-up of services markets, and have also been discussing the definitions and classifications of service sectors so as to ease the process of making market access commitments. As our own services industries gradually become more liberalized and internationally competitive, we will encourage other Members to open-up their markets and actively join in the discussions on rules-setting.
Active participation in accession negotiations with important countries
In participating in accession negotiations of potential new Members, our goal is to seek out business opportunities within the acceding countries. Among the many countries still applying for WTO membership, we have bilateral negotiations planned with Belarus, Lao PDR, Lebanon, Kazakstein, Iran, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. We believe we can create more business opportunities through the negotiation process, and at the same time strengthen our economic and trading relationship with these countries.
Improvement of bilateral relationships with important trading partners under the WTO
Under the multilateral framework of the WTO, one of our most important functions is to improve our bilateral relationships with important trading partners. The formulation of negotiating positions actually grows out of discussions between Members holding similar positions to each other from the beginning. Through bilateral negotiations with acceding countries as well, we find we can also build good, cooperative relationships. Our current goal of signing more Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) is also closely linked to our close involvement in WTO affairs. Discussions between our Mission and other Members’ Missions in Geneva are always conducted according to instructions from the capital.
