GENEVA, Feb 13 (Reuters) – The head of the World Trade Organization said that she agreed with U.S. calls for reform of the global trading system ahead of a major meeting of the trade watchdog in Cameroon next month.
Last year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing tariffs ranging from 10% to 41% on U.S. imports from dozens of countries and foreign locations. The U.S. Supreme Court is due to rule on their legality.
“We may not like the action (U.S. tariffs), but we must take the signal that we need to reform many of the things with the world trading system,” Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told the Munich Security Conference on Friday.
“The system is resilient, but it’s not robust, so we need to make it robust by doing the necessary reforms, and that is what we’re working on at the WTO,” she said, without giving specifics on what needed to change.
She called for an end to “lamentations” about U.S. trade policy and urged Europe and middle powers to show leadership.
(Reporting by Emma Farge, editing by Thomas Seythal)
