[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 122 (Thursday, July 2, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4232-S4233]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 SENATE RESOLUTION 651--EXPRESSING THE SENSE OF THE SENATE THAT, WHILE 
    THE UNITED STATES FINDS VALUE AND USEFULNESS IN THE WORLD TRADE 
  ORGANIZATION IN FULFILLING THE NEEDS OF THE UNITED STATES AND OTHER 
FREE AND OPEN ECONOMIES IN THE 21ST CENTURY, SIGNIFICANT REFORMS AT THE 
    WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION ARE NEEDED AND THE UNITED STATES MUST 
 THEREFORE CONTINUE TO DEMONSTRATE LEADERSHIP TO ACHIEVE THOSE REFORMS

  Mr. PORTMAN (for himself and Mr. Cardin) submitted the following 
resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Finance:

                              S. Res. 651

       Whereas the United States had led the formation, as well as 
     reform, of rules governing the multilateral trading system 
     since World War II;
       Whereas the United States is a founding member of the World 
     Trade Organization (in this preamble referred to as the 
     ``WTO'') and a key architect of the organization;
       Whereas the United States secured important commitments in 
     the WTO to facilitate trade in goods and services, to prevent 
     the application of non-scientific restrictions on United 
     States agriculture, and to protect United States intellectual 
     property;
       Whereas the United States uses the rules of the WTO to 
     benefit workers, farmers, and businesses in the United States 
     by facilitating access to the 90 percent of the world's

[[Page S4233]]

     consumers who live outside the borders of the United States;
       Whereas the fundamental purpose of the WTO is to create 
     space for members to negotiate with each other, and the WTO 
     reserves to those members exclusively the right to negotiate 
     and adopt rules that reduce and eliminate trade barriers and 
     discriminatory treatment;
       Whereas the prompt settlement of disputes in which a member 
     of the WTO considers that its rights are being impaired by 
     the actions of another member is essential to the functioning 
     of the WTO and the maintenance of a proper balance between 
     the rights and obligations of members;
       Whereas the WTO's dispute settlement function, including in 
     particular the Appellate Body, has increasingly failed to 
     enforce the rules of the WTO in a timely manner, and has 
     usurped the negotiating prerogative of members by creating 
     new obligations and rights that are inconsistent with the 
     rules negotiated by members;
       Whereas the creation of those obligations and rights 
     undermines--
       (1) the WTO's negotiating function by discouraging members 
     from making concessions; and
       (2) the WTO's dispute settlement function by encouraging 
     overuse of the process and undermining its legitimacy, 
     including by preventing free market economies from responding 
     to globally trade distortive practices by nonmarket 
     economies;
       Whereas the WTO does not have sufficient rules to 
     discipline the distortive economic policies of nonmarket 
     economies, such as policies relating to excess capacity and 
     forced technology transfer, the special treatment those 
     economies afford to state-owned enterprises, and their 
     massive and opaque industrial subsidies;
       Whereas there is long-standing bipartisan support in the 
     United States Congress to reform the WTO to address those 
     failings;
       Whereas the current presidential administration, as well as 
     prior administrations, raised concerns about the failings 
     described in this preamble and have made reform of the WTO a 
     top priority of United States trade policy;
       Whereas the United States urges WTO members to work 
     constructively with the United States to assess the reasons 
     why the existing WTO rules have proven inadequate in order to 
     create an atmosphere within the WTO that is conducive to the 
     development of new rules less subject to jurisprudential 
     drift;
       Whereas the guiding principle for reform of the WTO, and 
     the lens through which WTO members should consider specific 
     reform proposals, is the restoration of the WTO's capability 
     and capacity for negotiation between members; and
       Whereas, given that the United States has achieved its 
     trade policy objectives through active leadership at the WTO, 
     and that an absence of that leadership would be filled by 
     nonmarket economies that are hostile to a host of United 
     States interests: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that--
       (1) while the United States finds value and usefulness in 
     the World Trade Organization (in this resolution referred to 
     as the ``WTO'') in order to fulfill the needs of the United 
     States and other free and open economies in the 21st century, 
     significant reforms are needed;
       (2) the United States must therefore continue to 
     demonstrate leadership to achieve reforms that restore the 
     effectiveness of the WTO's--
       (A) negotiating function;
       (B) dispute settlement function so that it transparently, 
     efficiently, and fully enforces outcomes negotiated by 
     members rather than usurping their primacy by creating new 
     rights or obligations; and
       (C) rules for special and differential treatment to ensure 
     those rules promote development for truly disadvantaged 
     countries, rather than becoming tools for globally 
     competitive countries to engage in protectionism and market 
     distortions;
       (3) the efforts to reform the negotiating function of the 
     WTO should revitalize the negotiating function by providing 
     confidence to members that the WTO operates according to the 
     rules as negotiated and adopted by members;
       (4) a revitalized negotiating function must include new 
     rules that reflect the 21st century economy, further combat 
     anticompetitive and protectionist barriers, and ensure 
     disputes are efficiently resolved;
       (5) the United States Trade Representative should continue 
     to lead efforts to work with WTO members to pursue reforms at 
     the WTO that--
       (A) ensure the dispute settlement mechanism faithfully 
     applies the rules adopted by members, including by 
     undertaking measures to ensure the WTO's Appellate Body does 
     not create new rights and obligations;
       (B) improve public confidence in dispute settlement by 
     promoting greater transparency and efficiency in the conduct 
     of proceedings;
       (C) redress the consistent failure by certain members to 
     satisfy their notification obligations under various WTO 
     agreements, including through measures that strengthen 
     accountability;
       (D) ensures rules for special and differential treatment 
     are appropriately reserved for countries whose state of 
     development and global competitiveness actually warrants such 
     flexibility;
       (E) create new rules and structures that can serve the 
     interests of the United States while promoting peace, 
     prosperity, good governance, transparency, effective 
     operation of legal regimes, the rule of law, and free 
     enterprise; and
       (F) expand upon the trilateral negotiations currently 
     underway with Japan and the European Union; and
       (6) the United States Trade Representative should explore 
     and assess specific reform proposals, including--
       (A) pursuing plurilateral agreements that further the 
     interests of the United States while limiting the benefits 
     accruing to countries that are not parties to those 
     agreements;
       (B) efforts to ensure that incorrect interpretations by the 
     Appellate Body, including with respect to the Agreement on 
     Safeguards, the Agreement on Implementation of Article VI of 
     the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994, and the 
     Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, are 
     corrected, and not to be deemed precedential;
       (C) new rules and norms to address practices of nonmarket 
     economies, such as practices relating to state-owned 
     enterprises, which certain countries often utilize for 
     objectives that cause severe trade distortions; and
       (D) better implementation of existing rules, such as the 
     prohibition in paragraph 4 of Article XIV of the General 
     Agreement on Tariffs and Trade on currency manipulation, to 
     ensure that those rules are effective to preserve the rights 
     of free market economies.

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