Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI) introduced a one-page bill on Thursday that would withdraw Congressional approval for the United States to be a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), an international institution built to promote economic globalism and set standards for how countries do business.
In a statement shared with Breitbart News, Rep. Tiffany explained his stance that membership in the WTO harms America’s ability to trade fairly with the rest of the world, in part due to bias within the institution that favors communist China.
“The WTO has repeatedly overlooked China’s unfair trade practices and human rights abuses, undermined American farmers and manufacturers, and eroded our national sovereignty,” Rep. Tiffany said. “American trade policies should be made by American officials who are elected by American voters and accountable to American workers, not dictated by unelected international bureaucrats in Geneva.”
“It’s time to pursue a better approach to trade — one that puts American industry, jobs, and economic independence first,” he added.
The WTO was founded in 1995; America joined as one of its founding members following years of negotiations known as the “Uruguay Round,” and belongs to the group as a result of Congressional approval through the Uruguay Round Agreements Act. Rep. Tiffany’s bill reads, in its entirety: “Congress withdraws its approval, provided under section 101(a) of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, of the WTO Agreement as defined in section 2(9) of that Act.”
Congress initially approved entry into the WTO, but can reject America’s continued presence in the global body after the publication of a review by the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). Every five years, the USTR publishes a report to Congress assessing the strengths and weaknesses of belonging to the WTO, and every five years, for 90 days, any member of Congress can initiate the process for approving a joint resolution withdrawing America from the WTO.
USTR Jamieson Greer published the annual report, this year titled “The World Trade Organization at Thirty,” on March 3.
“The current moment demands action to put America First on trade, and the Trade Agenda explains the importance of President Trump’s trade policy to American workers and businesses,” Greer said upon announcing the publication of the report.
The WTO describes itself as “a forum for negotiating trade agreements” as well as a place to agree upon global norms of economic relationships. It also offers a forum to “settle trade disputes” by allowing countries to sue each other for violating WTO rules, similar to the functioning of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague but limited to trade issues.
The WTO actively promotes “free trade” as much as possible and has rarely weighed in on the human rights issues that have arisen in the post-Cold War era of “free trade,” including the rampant use of slavery in member states such as China. Defending itself from human rights critics, the WTO states on its website that “developing” countries “resist including labour standards in WTO rules” because they fear “protectionism,” and the WTO itself has not commented on the use of child labor “because the issue has never come up for a ruling.”
The WTO claims to have no “defined” spaces for developing countries as opposed to “developed” countries, but those who identify as “developing” benefit from privileges within the WTO intended to help enrich countries presumed to be less wealthy than “developed” partners. While the informal “developing” status is meant to help countries with low GDPs advance, China has abused the system by for years insisting on identifying as “developing” despite its position as the world’s second largest economy and world’s biggest exporter.
As a result of the benefits that China has enjoyed from WTO support, President Donald Trump announced in March that he would suspend financial contributions to the organization. Failing to pay millions of dollars into the organization to sustain membership will likely ultimately bar American citizens from high-ranking positions in the WTO, reports observed at the time.
Rep. Tiffany presented his bill on Thursday to remove America from the body entirely, noting that previous attempts by Congress to withdraw from the WTO resulted in no significant movement to exit.
“It has been two decades since Congress last voted on whether to continue our membership in this deeply flawed organization,” Rep. Tiffany said in a statement shared with Breitbart News. “The American people deserve to know if their elected officials stand with them or with China’s allies in the WTO.”
President Trump was harshly critical of the WTO on Wednesday, speaking to reporters about his policy initiatives dramatically increasing tariff rates on imports from China.
“This started with the World Trade Organization, which was owned by China. It was owned and paid for by China,” Trump asserted. “They didn’t even have to do things. They consider them a nation that was undeveloped.”
“They said they were a developing nation. Well, we’re a developing nation too, if you think about it, look at our inner cities. Look at what’s happened,” he continued. “I think we’re starting from ground zero there, right? So we’re a developing nation, too.”
The WTO confirmed on Tuesday that China had requested mediation within the agency with America in response to Trump’s tariff policy. The head of the organization, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, also issued a statement on Thursday condemning Trump for his efforts to limit the harmful effects of slavery-driven Chinese manufacturing on the American economy.
“The escalating trade tensions between the United States and China pose a significant risk of a sharp contraction in bilateral trade,” Okonjo-Iweala wrote in a statement. “The negative macroeconomic effects will not be confined to the United States and China but will extend to other economies, especially the least developed nations. Of particular concern is the potential fragmentation of global trade along geopolitical lines.”
The WTO argued that countries trading only with countries that share their values “could lead to a long-term reduction in global real GDP by nearly 7 percent.”
Its statement did not mention the significant volume of evidence suggesting malicious trade practices committed by China, including intellectual property theft, goods “dumping” to weaken foreign economies, and its use of slavery as part of the ongoing genocide of Uyghur and other Turkic people in occupied East Turkistan.
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