Search Results for: wto

US Trade Representative Katherine Tai Wednesday announced the Biden-Harris Administration’s “support for waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines.” https://twitter.com/AmbassadorTai/status/1390021205974003720?s=20 The announcement comes amid growing concern regarding the humanitarian crisis emerging from India’s second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports over 21 million confirmed cases in India alone, accounting for [...]

Ten Democratic Senators have delivered a letter to US President Joe Biden urging him to support temporarily waiving intellectual property (IP) rights for COVID-19 vaccines. The letter, delivered Thursday, claims that granting the temporary patent waiver would allow for countries to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines locally and increase vaccination rates in poorer nations, as well as [...]

The US blocked Venezuela Friday from pursuing its dispute over US sanctions at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The Biden administration does not recognize Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela, due to claims of election manipulation and illegitimate presidency. Instead, the administration recognizes Juan Guaidó as the interim president. Throughout 2020, the US imposed [...]

The State Council of the People’s Republic of China has approved rules established by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) to help Chinese companies and citizens uphold their legal trade rights in a foreign land. The rules will apply whenever a Chinese entity is prevented from exercising its trade or economic activities in a foreign [...]

On Christmas Eve, the European Union (‘EU’) and United Kingdom (‘UK’) finally reached a draft trade agreement (‘the Agreement’) that governs their post-Brexit affairs as of 01 January 2021. The deal, which has not yet been formally adopted or entered into force, comes to a hefty 1,246 pages and represents a major achievement of the [...]

The Indian economic model for defence expenditure relies heavily on Foreign Direct Investment or ‘FDI’ and for a country that spends 1.6% of its GDP on its defence, India meets more than 90% of essential requirements via imports whereas 30% of the total budget is spent on capital acquisitions. In light of the recent Indo-China [...]

A World Trade Organization (WTO) arbitrator has awarded the EU the right to impose tariffs on USD $4 billion of American goods annually, in retaliation against illegal subsidies given to the US plane manufacturer Boeing. The Tuesday decision marks the consummation of a 16-year-long legal battle before the WTO. It follows a parallel case that the [...]

A World Trade Organization (WTO) panel ruled Tuesday that tariffs that US President Donald Trump has leveled against more than $200 billion worth of Chinese goods are inconsistent with certain provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994. The trade dispute began in June 2018 when the US placed a 25 percent tariff on $34 [...]

The Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information technology banned 118 mobile apps Wednesday in an effort to put pressure on Chinese technology companies. The ministry said in a press release it had received multiple complaints that the banned apps had stolen users’ information and transmitted it to servers outside of India. The ban comes as [...]

20 Indian soldiers sacrificed their lives in a military face-off with China, igniting tensions along the Indo-China Line of Actual Control (“LAC”) in the Galwan Valley on the evening of June 15th. The clangour for economic sanctions is growing as strategic experts try to discern China’s Achilles heel, which India can exploit to put a [...]