JULY 1, 2018
A statue of Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans occupies the center of Lafayette Square on the north side of the White House January 20, 2018 in Washington, DC. The federal government was partially shut down at midnight after Republicans and Democrats in the Senate failed to find common ground on a budget. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
A draft of a bill from the Trump administration would propose having the US abandon key World Trade Organization principles and offer President Donald Trump significantly more discretion over US trade policy, Axios reported Sunday.
Trump ordered the draft legislation and was briefed on it in May, Axios reported, citing sources familiar with the situation, and the report said most officials involved in crafting the proposal believe it is “unrealistic or unworkable.”
White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters told Axios that the leaked draft is not “actual legislation that the administration was preparing to rollout.”
“Principals have not even met to review any text of legislation on reciprocal trade,” Walters told the news site.
The proposal would likely face significant headwinds in Congress, including from Trump’s own party, which has embraced free trade agreements and bristled at the administration’s tariffs on key US trading partners.
The report on the bill draft came days after Axios reported that Trump suggested privately that he wanted to withdraw the US from the WTO.
The leaked proposal, referred to as the “United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act,” would give Trump the authority, based on the administration’s assessment of trading policies between nations, to renegotiate or apply tariffs as he sees fit to push individual countries on trade.
The report notes that the authority the proposal would grant to Trump would essentially mean letting him move away from collective rules underpinning the WTO.
Courtesy: CNN
