{"id":9747,"date":"2018-08-30T15:43:23","date_gmt":"2018-08-30T22:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=9747"},"modified":"2018-08-30T15:43:23","modified_gmt":"2018-08-30T22:43:23","slug":"trump-threatens-to-withdraw-out-of-wto-if-it-doesnt-shape-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=9747","title":{"rendered":"Trump Threatens to Withdraw Out of WTO If It Doesn\u2019t \u2018Shape Up\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

President\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>\u00a0said he would pull out of the World Trade Organization if it doesn\u2019t treat the U.S. better, targeting a cornerstone of the international trading system.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf they don\u2019t shape up, I would withdraw from the WTO,\u201d Trump said Thursday in an Oval Office interview with Bloomberg News.<\/p>\n

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A U.S. withdrawal from the WTO potentially would be far more significant for the global economy than even Trump\u2019s growing trade war with China, undermining the post-World War II system that the U.S. helped build.<\/p>\n

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Trump said last month that the U.S. is at a big disadvantage from being treated \u201cvery badly\u201d by the WTO for many years and that the Geneva-based body needs to \u201cchange their ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Read More: Is Trump Finally Turning His Trade Guns on the WTO?<\/a><\/p>\n

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer has said allowing China into the WTO in 2001 was a mistake. He has long called for the U.S. to take a more aggressive approach to the WTO, arguing that it was incapable of dealing with a non-market economy such as China.<\/p>\n

Lighthizer has accused the WTO dispute-settlement system of interfering with U.S. sovereignty, particularly on anti-dumping cases. The U.S. has been blocking the appointment of judges to the WTO\u2019s appeals body, raising the possibility that it could cease to function in the coming years.<\/p>\n

Since World War II, successive U.S. presidents have led efforts to establish and strengthen global trading rules, arguing that they would bring stability to the world economy.<\/p>\n

The WTO was created in 1994 as part of a U.S.-led effort by major economies to create a forum for resolving trade disputes.<\/p>\n

One of Trump\u2019s chief complaints about the WTO is that its judges too often rule against the U.S., particularly in cases involving the country\u2019s anti-dumping regime.<\/p>\n

Countries that bring complaints to the WTO tend to prevail and defendants in trade disputes lose.<\/p>\n

The U.S. has lost almost 90 percent of the cases brought against it at the WTO, according to the Cato Institute, a Washington policy group that favors more open international trade. But the U.S. has won more than 90 percent of the cases that it has initiated and also brought more cases than any other WTO member.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has taken his complaints a step further by arguing that the WTO\u2019s dispute settlement system is broken and in need of a major overhaul.<\/p>\n

The EU has been leading an effort to propose reforms to try and defuse the conflict. Officials from the EU and Japan visited Washington last week to discuss potential changes as well as joint efforts to take on China at the WTO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0said he would pull out...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9747"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9748,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9747\/revisions\/9748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}