The U.S. National Trade Policy Agenda for 2017

The FT has a copy here. It is being portrayed as more evidence of the U.S. planning to move away from the WTO, and perhaps it is, but to be honest the language is not as radical as I expected.  Yes, there are mentions of "sovereignty" and concerns about judicial overreach in WTO dispute settlement, but overall I thought it stuck with generalities that would leave the U.S. with flexibility to make reform proposals rather than abandon WTO dispute settlement.  I think I was worried that there would be more specificity about the U.S. relying on alternatives to the WTO.  When I didn't see those, I felt a little better about where things might be headed.

But read it yourself and see what you think.

UPDATE: The above link was to a draft version of the report. The final version is here.

And this is from White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer today:

Q    Sean, the trade document that's out there, which suggests that the administration may take a position that would potentially ignore or look past WTO rulings.  Is there any truth to this?  

MR. SPICER:  No.

Q    What is the position?

MR. SPICER:  Again, I would just argue, look, we're a member of the WTO, we don't have a USTR in place yet.  So to suggest that we're going to take any kind of trade policies -- I think, obviously, we've got some concerns with the percentage of dispute resolutions that are brought to the WTO versus other nations.  But I would just -- that's sort of a fact in terms of the percentage of cases that get brought to dispute resolution at the USTR -- or, excuse me, at the WTO against the United States.  But we don't have a U.S. Trade Representative, so I would say that that's not --

Q    Like a working --

MR. SPICER:  No, no, no.  I mean, it's not even a working. That's not -- full stop -- that is not our policy and that's not where we're going.