Should WTO address anti-dumping measures?

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala says the WTO should investigate whether Australia was inappropriately using anti-dumping provisions to keep out foreign steel.

(FILES) A file photo taken on July 13, 2012 shows Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala speaking during the opening of the African Women Economic Summit in Lagos. According to a Finance Ministry statement, the mother of Okonjo-Iweala, Kamene Okonjo, was kidnapped on December 9 from her home in Ogwashi-Uku, Delta State, in the country's south. AFP PHOTO/PIUS UTOMI EKPEI

One of the two leading candidates to become the next director general of the embattled World Trade Organisation, a friend of former prime minister Julia Gillard, has defended globalisation and stressed the trade body’s role in a fair distribution of coronavirus vaccines.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, twice finance minister of Nigeria, also said the WTO should investigate whether Australia was inappropriately using anti-dumping provisions to keep out foreign steel — a practice that has frustrated China.

“Certainly there are arguments that some use of antidumping measures may not be warranted, and this can cause friction …. It’s not only Australia but others,” she told The Australian. “I think this is something WTO will have to pronounce on. It’s not for an individual to say.”

China, which opened an anti-dumping investigation into Australia’s $6bn of wine imports on Tuesday, in May slapped tariffs on $600m worth of Australian barley exports and black-listed some meat abattoirs, ostensibly in retaliation for Australia’s anti-dumping practices to keep out foreign steel.

Ms Okonjo-Iweala, who published a book last month with Ms Gillard on women and leadership, said around 90 countries had restrictions on the exports of medical supplies and equipment, and could extend them to coronavirus vaccines, making it difficult for poorer countries to gain access.

A WTO clause that allows countries facing medical emergencies who can’t manufacture vaccines to obtain them should be operationalised, she told The Australian, speaking to The Australian from Washington DC.

Ms Okonjo-Iweala, whose main competitor for the top trade role is Kenya’s Amina Mohamed, a WTO insider, said she was optimistic a vaccine would be available sometime next year.

“Some say even by end of this year, but that maybe a bit optimistic, when you have to manufacture hundreds of millions of doses,” she said.

The Geneva-based WTO, which hasn’t overseen any multilateral agreement since 2015, has recently been undermined by the trade war between the US and China and proliferation of bilateral trade agreements that undermine global rules.

“Australia is one of most active members in the WTO so it can be one of the members that tries to pull others around the table and agree on a way forward,” she said.

She said globalisation had “lifted many out of poverty but some were left behind within and between countries and that’s why you have this tendency to nationalisation and populism”.

“Countries want just in case, not just in time,” she said, adding the trend would not be enough to stop globalisation. “Even if countries reshore, there are studies that show even with all that, still 75 per cent of supply chains would be international.”

This campaign to replace incumbent director general Brazilian Roberto Azevêdo ends on September 7.

In 2016 the Productivity Commission found Australia was among the most frequent users of anti-dumping measures, of which more than 60 per cent were imposed on steel and mainly from Asian countries. Indonesia defeated Australia in a case before the WTO last year over A4 paper imports.