G20 seals landmark deal on WTO reform by ducking ‘taboo words’

Reuters
Many delegates from the world’s 20 largest economies arrived at a summit in Argentina this week determined to clinch an agreement to reform the global trade system, pushed to a breaking point by tensions between the United States and China. To do so, they had to bow to U.S. and Chinese demands to drop some of the pledges that have become hallmarks of the Group of 20 industrialized nations, which represents two-thirds of the global population. But they left with a communique committing for the first time to reform the dysfunctional World Trade Organization (WTO), the body supposed to regulate global trade disputes.
“A number of words that we used to have always in G7 and G20 summit communiques became kind of taboos,” a European official said on Saturday in the midst of the negotiations. “We have American taboos and Chinese taboos.”
First among those taboos is “protectionism”. The U.S. administration has become sensitive to criticisms after President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs not only on $250 billion of Chinese goods but also on steel and aluminum imports that hit several of his G20 partners.
As a result, for the first time since G20 leaders held their inaugural meeting in Washington in 2008, their communique did not contained a pledge to fight protectionism.