China’s foreign misistry said Thursday that China’s support for the WTO’s work will not change, reported Reuters. This coming after the release of a document from the Office of the US Trade Representative indicated that Washington might defy WTO rulings that are deemed to interfere with US sovreignty.
After rejecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, widely seen as a platform on which to build a multilateral regime that addresses some of the very problems Trump’s White House has with the WTO, what mechanism will the US now use to address trade disputes? While we wait years for new bilateral agreements that the US administration is hoping to establish, China will continue to count on the WTO.