A European Union request for dispute consultations with Russia in the World Trade Organization over an alleged Russian import substitution program was circulated to members July 26. The substitution program includes three measures to favor Russian state-owned enterprises and businesses over imported goods: price preferencing favoring Russian-origin products in government procurement practices, requirements to obtain prior authorization for the purchase of certain engineering products, and minimum quotas for Russian-origin products in the procurement policies of SOEs. “The EU claims the measures relating to the activities of certain state-related entities, and laws and regulations regulating these activities, are inconsistent with various provisions under the WTO's General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994, the General Agreement on Trade in Services, and Russia's Protocol of Accession to the WTO,” a notice on the dispute consultations said.

The World Trade Organization updated on July 20 a list of trade facilitation measures due to be implemented by the end of next year, released at the meeting of the Committee on Trade Facilitation. From July 1 to Dec. 31, 2021, 136 facilitation commitments have been agreed to by 36 different WTO members, which include speeding up the release of perishable goods and publishing trade procedures. Until the end of 2022, there are 389 implementation commitments for 74 members. Deadlines are based on members' own implementation schedules. The list does not include any commitments made by the U.S.

The U.S. will join World Trade Organization negotiations on strengthening transparency and fairness in domestic licensing procedures for service professionals, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announced July 20. The WTO Joint Statement Initiative on Services Domestic Regulation (DR JSI) negotiations should be wrapped up by the WTO ministerial meeting in November, USTR added. The DR JSI in particular can aid industries such as retailing, express delivery and financial services, the release said. USTR also pointed to the improvements to transparency and due process introduced in the USMCA that will be expanded upon in regulations under negotiation.

The European Union is challenging Russia's government procurement policies, the bloc said in a July 19 news release. The EU is requesting consultations with Russia via the World Trade Organization dispute resolution process over three policies that restrict or prevent EU companies from selling to Russian state-owned enterprises. It cited Russia's discriminatory assessments of procurement bids, requirements for prior authorizations and national quota requirements in procurement. When the Russian entities assess goods for procurement, certain SOEs will deduct 15% to 30% from the offered price for domestic goods but still charge full price if the Russian bid is selected, putting foreign interests at a disadvantage. Such restrictions have been building since 2015, the release said. The economic impact of this has been “significant," with the value of published tenders by Russian SOEs in 2019 totaling over 290 billion euros and equivalent to 21% of Russia's GDP.

The World Trade Organization released a list of trade bottlenecks and trade-facilitating measures on critical COVID-19 products in a July 20 publication, ahead of the July 21 High-Level Dialogue by the World Health Organization and WTO on expanding COVID-19 vaccines manufacturing to promote equitable access. The indicative list covers vaccine production inputs, vaccine distribution and approval, therapeutics and pharmaceuticals, diagnostics and medical devices. The publication also lays out suggestions made by speakers at the WTO's webinar on regulatory cooperation during the COVID-19 pandemic, which include general import, export and transit procedures, and vaccine manufacturing and regulatory approval. “The list is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all specific trade barriers, nor does it make any judgement on the existence or importance of bottlenecks, nor on the desirability of implementing any of the suggestions on trade-facilitating measures,” the WTO said in an accompanying news release.

World Trade Organization Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said there is now political support to move forward on an agreement to curb subsidies that lead to overfishing. The draft text has been blessed by all the heads of delegations in Geneva, she said in a news conference July 15.

Since China failed to implement the recommendations from the World Trade Organization's Dispute Settlement Body on how to bring tariff-rate quotas on agricultural products in line with WTO commitments, the U.S. is seeking to implement countermeasures on the TRQs, the U.S. delegation to the DSB said in July 16 comments. Submitting their rationale in a one-page brief to the DSB ahead of the July 26 meeting, the U.S. delegation discussed how it is seeking the countermeasures under the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes (DSU).

The World Trade Organization, along with the International Trade Centre and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, released the World Tariff Profiles 2021 July 14 -- a comprehensive publication on the tariffs and nontariff measures enacted by over 170 countries and customs territories. The publication includes summary tables that allow comparisons across countries of the average or maximum tariff each economy puts on its imports and the average in-practice tariff rate. Each country or customs territory also has its own one-page profile with breakout lines for each product group. The profiles report, in a new section, also breaks down nontariff measures, looking at three indicators of NTMs (frequency index, coverage ratio and prevalence score). Almost 60% of imported goods need to comply with at least one NTM, leading to almost 80% of imported goods by value being subjected to NTMs, the report said.

The European Union posed a series of questions to China at the World Trade Organization in a July 6 request for information, seeking to understand how a series of laws and court decisions in the world's second-largest economy affect the enforcement of intellectual property rights. Recent events have spurred interest from the EU in China's IPR and patent enforcement since there were four Chinese court cases relating to the enforcement of injunctions to standard patents. Some of these decisions relate to court procedures on license and royalty rate questions as well.

World Trade Organization Ambassador Santiago Wills of Colombia, who chairs WTO's fisheries subsidies negotiation, submitted on June 30 a revised version of the draft text on the fisheries subsidies agreement. A ministerial meeting will be held July 15. The revised text includes an initial text on the prohibition of subsidies on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, subsidies toward overcapacity and overfishing, and specific provisions for least developed country members. “In this sense, the text should help ministers to engage on 15 July in a way that will provide us the kind of push and political guidance that we need at this stage to be able to move towards conclusion,” Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said in a statement. “I sense a change in mood, and we should take advantage of that mood to push towards concluding these negotiations.”