This exchange is from today's Senate Finance Committee hearing to consider the nomination of Maria Pagan for Deputy USTR in Geneva (Ambassador to the WTO):
Senator Carper:
I would like to start off with a question ... for Ms. Pagan, dealing with WTO reform. Ms. Pagan, I've always felt it's something imperfect, we ought to work to make it better. And there's been a great deal of conversation, really on both sides of the aisle, and across the globe, about the need for reforms in the WTO. And that we know that the WTO has an important role to play in combating unfair trade practices that persist in non market economies like China. Unfortunately, the organization continues to face challenges with its dispute settlement system, including the lack of quorum on the Appellate Body that weakened the WTO's enforcement. The question is this, in your opinion, what strategy should our country take, the US take, to reforming the WTO and addressing the operability of the WTO's Appellate Body?
Maria Pagan:
Thank you, Senator Carper. The good thing is that we all agree, I think there's consensus that the WTO, and particularly the Appellate Body, need to be reformed. I guess on the other hand, we all have different views of what reform means, and particularly with respect to the Appellate Body. What we want, and if confirmed what I will work hard to do, is to have conversations so that we can restore the Appellate Body and the dispute settlement system to what we thought we had agreed to. We never intended the Appellate Body to be a rulemaking body. We believe that rules have to be enforced, but it has to be the rules as they were negotiated and agreed by the Members. So we need to, USTR has been having, these conversations, and we will continue to have these conversations. And I suspect that I will spend a lot of time having these conversations with our counterparts at the WTO to make sure that we can restore the Appellate Body and the system to the way that we envisioned it at the beginning. And I don't think it's going to be an easy conversation but it's something that I look forward to doing while I'm there.
Restoring the Appellate Body sounds positive, and perhaps more positive than other things we have heard from U.S. trade officials for a while. At the same time, restoring "the system to the way that we envisioned it at the beginning" is going to be tricky, because there may be different views on what was envisioned at the beginning, as well as different views on what is appropriate and necessary now.
