Aerial photo taken on July 10, 2019 shows cargo ships at Jingtang port area of Tangshan Port, north China's Hebei Province. The throughput of Tangshan Port reached 317 million tons from January to June this year, growing 4.83 percent year on year. (Photo: Xinhua)

A recent decision by the US administration to push for reforms at the WTO to revoke special treatment the multilateral trade body grants to developing countries is unlikely to sail through as the move will draw widespread objection from many developing countries including China and India, a top Chinese expert on the WTO said on Sunday.

Coming days ahead of planned talks between Chinese and US trade officials in Shanghai this week, the tough rhetoric from US President Donald Trump and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer regarding the long- debated developing-country status issue to be aimed at pressuring China during the negotiations said Huo Jianguo, vice chairman of the China Society for World Trade Organization Studies.

Trump on Friday signed a memorandum in which he directed the US Trade Representative Office to devote "all necessary resources" to change the WTO's approach toward developing countries, arguing that the mechanism allows many developing countries to take advantage of the US.

In a statement released on Friday, Lighthizer largely repeated claims in the White House document and vowed to implement Trump's order. However, neither the White House document nor Lighthizer's statement specified actions the US will take to push for the reforms.

Huo, who is also an adviser to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), said that there are no concrete actions the US can take to push reforms through WTO because the proposal has been rejected by many developing countries such as China and India.

"WTO members will have to debate on this and decide together. The US does not have the final say on this," he told the Global Times, noting that developing countries have been pushing for reforms in the WTO to gain more say, while developed countries led by the US are pushing to preserve their dominance.

Apart from the developing-country status issue, the US has also been trying to eliminate the Appellate Body, the highest adjudicating body at the WTO, arguing that some rulings from the body have been unfair to the US, despite the fact that it also won many cases against the EU, China and other parties. The US proposal has already drawn widespread opposition from many countries.

In a follow-up tweet on Saturday, Trump again attacked the WTO, saying that the global trade body is "broken" and the world's "richest countries claim to be developing countries to avoid WTO rules and get special treatment. No more!"

However, rather than a concrete move, the tough war of words is probably aimed at increasing pressure on China trade negotiators this week, according to Huo. "That is their clear goal to pressure China any way they can to give more ground in the talks. But they should know by now that will not work with China," he said.

After weeks of talks over the phone since the two countries reached a truce at the end of June, trade negotiators from the two countries will hold a new round of face-to-face talks in Shanghai from Tuesday to Wednesday, the MOFCOM announced on Thursday.
Newspaper headline: US bid to squeeze developing countries at WTO won’t be accepted: analyst