‘No panic’ over Trump threat to leave, says WTO chief
President Donald Trump’s remark about possibly withdrawing the US from the World Trade Organization is not a new sentiment and not a cause for panic, the WTO director general said, downplaying the line that rocked media headlines.
“No panic,” WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo said on Friday, according to Reuters. “The US concerns about areas in the WTO that they would like to improve are not new. And I think what he said yesterday is consistent with what they have expressed before.”
Trump said he was considering the possibility of withdrawing the US from the organization during an interview with Bloomberg News on Thursday.
“If they don’t shape up, I would withdraw from the WTO,” Trump said, shortly before departing the White House for a campaign rally in Indiana.
He has previously called the WTO a “catastrophe” that has treated the US “very badly” for many years, and that the Geneva-based body will need to “change their ways.”
His trade envoy Robert Lighthizer has called the move to allow China into the WTO "a mistake" and accused the trade body’s dispute settlement system of interfering with US sovereignty. The Trump administration has recently blocked the appointment of judges to the WTO’s appeals body.
The WTO was established in 1995, replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), that was started by 23 countries in 1948 in order to lower tariffs and promote free trade.
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The Trump administration has recently introduced a series of tariffs on imports, complaining that US trade partners have been taking advantage of badly negotiated free-trade deals to flood the US market and destroy domestic manufacturing.
