New US ambassador tells WTO something is ‘terribly wrong’
Dennis Shea attacks the World Trade Organisation over vacancies, tardiness — and needing to ‘confront the havoc’ created by China
Geneva — The new US ambassador to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) told its membership on Tuesday that something had gone "terribly wrong" with judges at the world body and that China’s arguments showed Beijing was living in a fantasy. Addressing the WTO’s general council for the first time, Dennis Shea said the WTO’s rules had substantial value and the rules had "generally contributed" to global economic stability, but he said there was a "steadily worsening rupture of trust" by the appellate body — the judges who form what is effectively the supreme court of world trade, and whose appointments the US has been blocking. "Something has gone terribly wrong in this system when those charged with adjudicating the rules are so consistently disregarding those very rules," Shea said, according to a copy of his remarks provided to Reuters. The judges had interpreted the WTO agreements to reach judgments that the WTO’s member countries never agreed to and had expanded its own capacity to ...
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