The deadline for least developed countries to align their intellectual property rights protections under the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, which was to expire July 1, is now July 1, 2034, a June 29 WTO news release said. TRIPS Council members approved the 13-year extension June 29. The TRIPS transition period for LDCs has twice before been extended -- in 2005 and 2013.

Australia will "take action" at the World Trade Organization via its dispute settlement process to combat Chinese antidumping duties on Australian wine, the country's trade minister announced in a June 19 press release. Winemakers in Australia have seen exports drop from around $830 million (US dollar equivalents) to about $15 million following punitive Chinese tariffs as high as 218% on Australian wine, Bloomberg reported. While Australia claims to remain open to direct engagement with China on this issue, "the Government will continue to vigorously defend the interests of Australian winemakers using the established system in the WTO to resolve our differences," the release said. The action comes after a long year of rising trade tensions between the two nations.

The Japanese government has requested consultations with the government of China at the World Trade Organization over Chinese antidumping duties on stainless steel billets, hot-rolled coils and hot-rolled plates from Japan, it said in a June 15 consultation request. The measures are inconsistent with China's commitments in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994, Japan said. The antidumping duties were not based on positive evidence, were imposed without proper analyses and were put in place without demonstrating a harm to domestic industry, the request said.

Top trade officials from Europe, Japan and North America emphasized problematic economic behavior in China, without mentioning the world's second-largest economy by name, at the end of the G-7 meeting of trade ministers.

The next meeting of the World Trade Organization's Dispute Settlement Body will feature a few U.S. antidumping measures, according to a May 18 release from WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Among the American measures, antidumping duties on certain hot-rolled steel products from Japan, antidumping and countervailing duties on large residential washers from Korea, and methodologies for establishing antidumping measures involving China will be on the DSB's May 28 meeting agenda. In addition, the U.S.'s Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000 will come into focus, as the DSB releases its implementation of the recommendations adopted by the body.

Canada and Australia have reached a deal over market access to wine, according to a May 18 notification to the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body. Canada has agreed to lift the federal excise duty exemption on wine, and the further trade restrictive measures put in place by the government of Quebec will be eliminated, the notification said. In return, Australia dropped its legal claims against the Canada in the WTO.

The chair of the fisheries subsidies negotiations at the World Trade Organization said delegations are feeling urgency around these talks, and they should capitalize on that to get a deal done before mid-July. Ambassador Santiago Wills of Colombia, chair of the WTO fisheries subsidies negotiations, released a new document text on May 11 to guide members to a solution on the subsidies dispute ahead of the July 15 ministerial meeting. The text outlines the types of illegal fishing and subsidies that a negotiated agreement would outlaw to prevent overcapacity and overfishing. Beginning May 24, WTO members will have the opportunity to identify other issues on which agreement will be most difficult to obtain, according to a press release from the WTO. Wills said, “This leaves us just two months to finish. The shared sense of urgency is palpable, and we need to harness that sense to finally agree to the compromise landing zones that will represent the ambitious and balanced outcome that ministers in Buenos Aires mandated us to find, to make a substantial and tangible contribution to the health of our shared oceans.”