YAOUNDÉ: US trade policy is a “corrective response” to the unbalanced rules of the World Trade Organization, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said as the WTO’s ministerial conference opened Thursday.
The status quo “has become economically unworkable and politically unacceptable”, Greer said in a video statement as the global trade body’s ministerial conference — its supreme decision-making body — kicked off in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde.
Yaounde marks the WTO’s first ministerial since US President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, unleashing a barrage of attacks on multilateralism and WTO rules with sweeping tariffs and bilateral trade deals.
Greer said Trump was restructuring the trading system to base it on “reciprocity, fairness, and balanced trade”.
“US trade policy measures are a corrective response to a trading system, embodied by the WTO, that has overseen and contributed to severe and sustained imbalances,” Greer said.
“They are a response to the failure of multilateral institutions and negotiations to....
