Trump was just asked in a press conference if he was going to quit the WTO, as rumors lately have suggested.
Here’s what he had to say:
Here’s what he said:
The WTO has treated the United States very badly and I hope they change their ways. They have been treating us very badly for many, many years. That’s why we’ve been at a big disadvantage with the WTO.
We’re not planning anything now but if they don’t treat us properly, we will be doing something.
Trump is clearly not happy with the WTO and is sending them a warning with his answer. But as we’ve reported before, it would take an act of Congress to get out of the WTO.
Interestingly enough, Axios reported on a bill yesterday that the Trump administration has written get them out from under the WTO without actually getting out of the WTO:
Axios has obtained a leaked draft of a Trump administration bill — ordered by the president himself — that would declare America’s abandonment of fundamental World Trade Organization rules.
Why it matters: The draft legislation is stunning. The bill essentially provides Trump a license to raise U.S. tariffs at will, without congressional consent and international rules be damned.
The details: The bill, titled the “United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act,” would give Trump unilateral power to ignore the two most basic principles of the WTO and negotiate one-on-one with any country:
- The “Most Favored Nation” (MFN) principle that countries can’t set different tariff rates for different countries outside of free trade agreements;
- “Bound tariff rates” — the tariff ceilings that each WTO country has already agreed to in previous negotiations.
“It would be the equivalent of walking away from the WTO and our commitments there without us actually notifying our withdrawal,” said a source familiar with the bill.
- “The good news is Congress would never give this authority to the president,” the source added, describing the bill as “insane.”
- “It’s not implementable at the border,” given it would create potentially tens of thousands of new tariff rates on products. “And it would completely remove us from the set of global trade rules.”
Now some were quick to suggest this was fake news, or perhaps a ‘leak trap’ set by the administration to catch leakers. Personally, I’m not sure I believe that as this really feels like Trump.
But then someone pointed this out:
They named the bill the FART Act. I am not making this up. "The bill, titled the 'United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act,' would give Trump unilateral power to ignore the two most basic principles of the WTO and negotiate one-on-one with any country" https://t.co/WqeaMLqLbj
— Garance Franke-Ruta (@thegarance) July 2, 2018
Wow. Um…so I dunno. I still think this could be legit, especially with Trump’s comments above about the WTO. But naming it the FART Act does make me wonder.