Bartels said it was not clear if the move would affect the U.S. relationship. \u201cIt is possible that the U.S. is less concerned now about the MPIA than it was,\u201d he said. \u201cBut even if this is not the case, the U.K. must now have decided that trade relations with the U.S. are sufficiently stable for it to be able to sign up to the MPIA anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is an alternative explanation,\u201d Bartels added, \u201cwhich is that this was a \u2018reset\u2019 deal-breaker for the EU, and the U.K. chose the EU over the U.S. But that seems less likely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Priorities elsewhere<\/p>\n
But Simon Lester, President of WorldTradeLaw.net and a fellow at the Baker Institute, cautioned against reading too much into the U.K.\u2019s decision, which he describes as a \u201ccommonsense way forward so that it can take full advantage of WTO dispute settlement.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is possible that some people in Brussels and Washington may try to read into it a broader statement related to U.K. alliances and alignment,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is probably a mistake to view it this way, though, as the impact of the U.K.\u2019s decision to join the MPIA is fairly narrow, and is much more limited than, say, the substantive trade deal that the U.K. government recently signed with the Trump administration.\u201d<\/p>\n
A senior consultant familiar with the Office of the United States Trade Representative\u2019s stance on WTO matters said: \u201cTheir position is that they\u2019re immune to pressure at the moment on restoring the appellate body. Until China, the EU and India come forward with meaningful WTO reform, proposals are not going to move.\u201d<\/p>\n
The consultant, who was granted anonymity to speak freely, added: \u201cWhile they won’t love the U.K. announcement, they’ve got bigger issues on their plate \u2014 not least all the bilateral deals which are meant to be done in the next two weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bartels said it was not clear if the move would affect the U.S. relationship. \u201cIt is possible that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[85428,186,748,943,1395,27332,32,393,4884,730,1144,46,712,1201,16,15,49,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-214812","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-appellate-body","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-britain","13":"tag-canada","14":"tag-china","15":"tag-dispute-settlement","16":"tag-donald-trump","17":"tag-england","18":"tag-great-britain","19":"tag-india","20":"tag-northern-ireland","21":"tag-policy","22":"tag-scotland","23":"tag-trade","24":"tag-uk","25":"tag-united-kingdom","26":"tag-united-states","27":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114747483379789774","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}