US criticizes WTO after failure to reach agreement on e-commerce moratorium and customs duties

The United States trade representative, Jamieson Greer, vehemently criticized the World Trade Organization (WTO), after the failure of negotiations on the extension of the moratorium that exempts electronic commerce from customs duties.

“I have always been skeptical about the usefulness of the WTO, and this week’s conference confirmed that this organization will play only a limited role in future global trade policy efforts,” Jamieson Greer said in a statement released on Monday.

The United States, which is demanding a permanent moratorium on e-commerce products, accused Brazil and Turkey of having blocked the negotiations, which ended on Monday in Cameroon without a significant agreement.

WTO members generally apply customs duties to imported goods and services, but in 1998 they agreed not to impose them on dematerialized electronic commerce.

The WTO ministerial conference, organized every two years, had been renewing this moratorium, without interruption, for almost three decades.

Some developing countries were hesitant last weekend, seeing the moratorium as a loss of tax revenue and, due to the lack of an agreement, the exemption expired on Monday.

The end of the moratorium does not automatically imply new customs duties, but it constitutes a major setback for developed countries and, in particular, for the United States.

The negotiations in Yaoundé took place in a context of global economic turmoil, associated with the war in the Middle East and in a commercial environment shaken by customs duties imposed by US President Donald Trump.

At the end of the work in the capital of Cameroon, the director general of the WTO, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, lamented the lack of agreement, despite the prolongation of negotiations for almost 24 hours.

“Although we tried hard, we lacked time”, declared Okonjo-Iweala at the end of the 14th WTO ministerial conference, indicating that the matter will be resumed in Geneva, the organization’s headquarters, in May, and expressing confidence that the delegations of the 166 member countries can, with more time, reach an agreement.