Speaking to the EU Trade Policy Day on April 26, the new WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala directly challenged the effort by the U.S., EU and Japan to impose new rules directly targeting state subsidies to industries and imposing more transparency in state-owned industries, recognized by all as measures aimed at China.
“I’ll just be very open,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “When China feels it’s being targeted and it’s only about China, then you get a lot of resistance.” She warned that countries should not “use the WTO or trade as kind of a weapon to solve” political issues. Global TImes said that this was “a reference to the plan pushed by the U.S., the EU and Japan to try to `weaponize the WTO’ and international trading rules to serve their ill-willed, selfish political interests in containing China’s economic rise.”
