WITA’s Friday Exchange: Sunrise, Sunset, Swiftly Flows the Trade News: Europe, India, China and the WTO
Former Trade Negotiators Discuss This Week’s Tariff and Trade Developments.
No one understands the dynamics with key U.S. trading partners better than the people who led these kinds of difficult trade negotiations for the United States. Panelists will update our viewers on the trade policy announcements, what remains undone; and what are expected next steps in these trade negotiations.
In the latest episode of the Friday Exchange, our trade insiders shine the spotlight on Europe, potential steel controversies, and the future of multilateralism. We break down the European Parliament’s not-so-enthusiastic move to advance the Turnberry Agreement with the U.S., while building in “sunrise” and “sunset” safeguards that allow the EU to walk away if Washington changes course. They also unpack what that means for steel and aluminum tariffs, why the details on derivative products could become a deal-breaker, and how rising prices, lost jobs, and political pressure are shaping the next moves. They also chat about U.S.–India trade, the WTO e-commerce moratorium, China, and taking the U.S. seriously on WTO reform.
Introduction: Kenneth Levinson, CEO, WITA – The International Trade Membership Association
Joe Damond, Principal, DamondGlobal LLC; former Deputy Assistant USTR for Asia
Daniel Mullaney, Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council; former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Europe and the Middle East
Chris Padilla, Senior Advisor, Brunswick Group; former Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade
Dawn Shackleford, President at Looking Glass Trade, LLC; former Executive Director for Trade Agreements Policy & Negotiations, Department of Commerce; former Assistant USTR for WTO & Multilateral Affairs
Watch the Video on YouTube | Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Recorded at 9:00 AM US/ET on 03/27/2026 | WITA
Live from Yaoundé, Cameroon! WTO MC14 Briefing
On Friday, March 27, WITA hosted a unique pop-up industry briefing live streamed from the World Trade Organization’s 14th Ministerial Conference (MC14) in Yaoundé, Cameroon.
Featured Speakers Live in Yaoundé:
Alice Slayton Clark, Senior VP of Trade, Investment and Digital Policy, United States Council for International Business
Isabelle Icso, Executive Director, International Policy, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Special Online Guests:
Angela Ellard, Senior Advisor (non-resident), Center for Strategic and International Studies; former Deputy Director General, World Trade Organization
Maria Pagan, former Deputy United States Trade Representative, and United States Ambassador to the WTO
03/27/2026 | WITA
MC14 Message by United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer
MC 14 comes at a time of generational transition and change for the WTO and for the broader global trading system.
President Trump is taking long-overdue trade actions to address deep and structural problems in the trading system. At the same time, he is negotiating with scores of our trading partners to lay the foundations for a better trading order based on principles of reciprocity, fairness, and balanced trade.
Our actions and the agreements we are forging with you, our trading partners, are disrupting a status quo that has become economically unworkable and politically unacceptable.
U.S. 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. They are a response to the failure of multilateral institutions and negotiations to achieve fairness in terms of market access and a level playing field. And they are a response to the realities of the international system, and an admission of what we all know to be true: nations prioritize first and foremost their essential security and the needs of their citizens.
The trade imbalances we are combatting have damaged industries and their workforces in developed and developing economies alike, leading to deindustrialization, dependency, and despair.
In contrast, the new global trading order that is emerging will be more flexible than the current system. It will better enable us to maintain balance and reciprocity. Where appropriate, it will allow us to have bespoke trade arrangements with different partners or groups of partners based on the unique elements of those relationships.
The new order will involve bilateral agreements and agreements among smaller groups of partners, but this will lead to increased cooperation and progress. Instead of wasting years and even decades to agree on a lowest-common denominator, like-minded partners can achieve progress in the near term on current and emerging issues. In such bilateral and plurilateral agreements, the benefits will accrue to those partners – not to free riders or countries that undermine fair, market-oriented competition.
Full Message of United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
03/27/2026 | Office of the United States Trade Representative
MC14: The “Turning Point Ministerial” to Strengthen the WTO and Advance U.S. Interests
The fourteenth World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference (MC14), aptly described as the “Turning Point Ministerial” by Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, is scheduled for March 26–29 in Yaoundé, Cameroon. This paper summarizes the issues, suggests likely outcomes, and proposes some paths to make MC14 a success.
The conference takes place at a moment when the organization and the rules-based trading system it upholds are under attack by many of its members and outside commentators. At the same time, no WTO member, including the United States, has seriously threatened withdrawal. Members still rely on WTO rules to govern most global trade. But each member, regardless of size, scale of economic power, level of development, or economic structure, is competing to shape the WTO’s future in its own image. Compromise is rare; rhetoric is high.
The challenge at every ministerial conference is to move beyond prepared speeches and engage in genuine dialogue that produces substantive outcomes. It is always tempting to procrastinate and push actual decisions into the future, but sometimes groundwork must be laid by setting a clear path for future work. In those cases, a meaningful work plan may be the best attainable result given the divisions among the 166 members, turning the tide and leading ultimately to real reform.
At the very least, ministers at MC14 must clearly articulate their differences and construct a consequential, measurable path for reconciling them. Experience shows that such outcomes require considerable political will—and inspired leadership—to produce such substantive outcomes. It remains to be seen whether that will and leadership will be present at MC14. This paper discusses the issues ministers will face—both those on the table and under the table—and suggests a strategy for a possible way forward.
03/24/2026 | Angela Paolini Ellard & William Alan Reinsch | Center for Strategic and International Studies
EU Parliament Passes the Turnberry Agreement: Yes to Reduced Tariffs on U.S. Goods, But Only with Strong Guarantees
The European Parliament has approved its negotiating position on two legislative proposals that implement the tariff-related aspects of the trade agreement between the European Union and the United States. The agreement was reached in July 2025 at the Turnberry golf resort in Scotland between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and US President Donald Trump.
If these texts are agreed with the Council of the EU, they will eliminate most tariffs on US industrial goods imported into the EU and grant preferential market access for a wide range of US fishery and agricultural products – in line with the commitments made in summer 2025. In contrast, European products exported to the US will face a 15% tariff.
The two legislative acts were approved with the following votes:
- 417 in favor, 154 against, and 71 abstentions (for adjusting customs duties and opening tariff quotas for certain US-origin goods).
- 437 in favor, 144 against, and 60 abstentions (for non-application of customs duties on certain imports).
However, the European Parliament’s approval is not unconditional. MEPs have significantly strengthened the protective clauses compared to the European Commission’s original proposal. The goal is to prevent the EU from granting tariff concessions without full reciprocity from the U.S. side.
Rapporteur Bernd Lange (President of the International Trade Committee and parliamentary negotiator) summarized the position: the Parliament will accept the commercial terms of the agreement “only if the regulation contains very solid and clear guarantees” and “only after the United States has fully respected the terms of the agreement.”
03/26/2026 | Georgi Gotev | Focus Europe Italy | EUalive
Trump Admin Accuses Foreigners of Excessive SExCiness, Threatens Them with Tariffs
In the Reagan-era Washingtoon comic, Rep. Bob Forehead’s political consultants grow disenchanted with bland “buzzwords” such as “jobs” and “big spenders.” (Short and easy to grasp, yes, but voters sense a lack of intellectual weight.) Anticipating a presidential campaign launch and worried about “an emerging perception of Bob as being purely image and lacking in substance”, they supplement his buzzwords with “fuzzwords”. These are long polysyllables — e.g., “the Federal Reserve should abandon its targets of aggregates” — which also lack intellectual weight, but sound complicated and thus have a desirably confusing and numbing effect on the public.
Life imitates art: Four decades later, aware that short 2025 tariff slogans like “new golden age” and “reindustrialization” aren’t landing, the Trump administration is trying the same thing. Last week the U.S. Trade Representative Office published a Federal Register Notice introducing a nine-syllable neologism — “structural excess capacity” — as a new intellectual foundation for tariff increases:
“The Trump Administration’s reindustrialization efforts continue to face significant challenges due to foreign economies’ structural excess capacity and production in manufacturing sectors. Across numerous sectors, many U.S. trading partners are producing more goods than they can consume domestically. This overproduction displaces existing U.S. domestic production or prevents investment and expansion in U.S. manufacturing production that otherwise would have been brought online.”
As policy, the Notice announces a “Section 301” investigation of 16 economies — Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam — for “structural excess capacity”. For readers new to trade-bar jargon, Section 301 is a 1974 statute giving administrations some ability to threaten tariffs on goods from particular countries, in hopes of getting them to remove objectionable policies. Typical uses, mostly in the 1980s and 1990s but more recently vis-à-vis China, were on specific things: limits on U.S. exports, intellectual property appropriation, etc. Using this law for “structural excess capacity” — it seems essentially to mean a country’s overall industrial output; see below — is novel.
Obvious first question: Who is writing these Notices, anyway? As a fuzzword, “structural excess capacity” has the right murky tone, but astute readers quickly catch its natural acronym: “SExC.” So the administration is accusing the Euros, as well as the Japanese, Thais, Mexicans, Bangladeshis, etc., of excessive SExCiness and threatening them with tariffs for it.
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03/18/2026 | Ed Gresser | Progressive Policy Institute
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