Sec. 2. Findings; Sense of Congress
366 words·~2 min read·
/bill/117/s/3708/is/section-2A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
Congress makes the following findings: The World Trade Organization (in this section referred to as the WTO ) was established to be a forum for multilateral trade negotiations between member countries. Scant negotiating progress has been made at the WTO since its creation in 1995, including through the failed Doha Round, which was initiated 20 years before the date of the enactment of this Act. The inability to reach negotiated outcomes at the WTO has pushed the multilateral trading system to the brink of irrelevance and created incentives for members of the WTO to pursue their trade policy objectives through litigation rather than negotiation.
That lack of negotiating progress can be generally attributed to a small minority of WTO members that, for a variety of reasons, have exercised an effective veto over negotiations, effectively prohibiting agreement on new rules to discipline discriminatory practices. Most favored nation (in this section referred to as MFN ) obligations, strictly defined, which appear to generally require equal treatment of all WTO members, make it difficult to achieve high-quality plurilateral agreements because of concerns about free ridership by WTO members who are not party to those agreements.
It is the sense of Congress that— the WTO system affords a variety of flexibilities for WTO members to negotiate and conclude plurilateral agreements without extending the benefits negotiated therein to the entire membership of the WTO on an MFN basis; to reinvigorate the multilateral trading system and advance its trade interests, the United States should exercise its rights to negotiate new sectoral trade agreements with other interested WTO members on a plurilateral basis; to facilitate those negotiations, enable a high level of ambition, and avoid lowest common denominator outcomes, any new benefits negotiated under those new agreements should be limited to the participants and not extended to the entire membership of the WTO; and pursuing plurilateral agreements that are not subject to unconditional MFN will enable the United States to work with like-minded countries within the framework of the WTO to develop new rules to discipline discriminatory, trade distorting, and non-market practices, restore the relevance of the multilateral trading system, and expand trade to the benefit of the citizens of the United States.