Ambassador Katherine Tai, United States Trade Representative, Mr. Hagiuda Koichi, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan, and Mr. Valdis Dombrovskis, Executive Vice President of the European Commission, met virtually on 30 November 2021.
The Ministers agreed to renew their Trilateral partnership to address the global challenges posed by non-market policies and practices of third countries that undermine and negatively affect our workers and businesses. They agreed to focus their work as trilateral partners in three areas:
1) Identification of problems due to non-market practices
2) Identification of gaps in existing enforcement tools, and where further work is needed to develop new tools to address such practices, as well as discussing cooperation in utilizing existing tools
3) Identification of areas where further work is needed to develop rules to address such practices
The Ministers instructed their staff to advance in parallel on all three focus areas and agreed to review progress regularly.
The Ministers highlighted the importance of WTO reform in an effort to build a free and fair rules-based multilateral trading system that benefits all its members and helps secure shared prosperity for all and reaffirmed their shared commitment to a successful 12th WTO Ministerial Conference, to be held in due course.
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