(Adds details)
By Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON, Feb 28 (Reuters) - The Trump administration on
Friday said it would focus on concluding new trade agreements
with Britain, the European Union and Kenya over the coming year,
while strictly enforcing trade laws and pushing for reforms of
the World Trade Organization.
In its annual report to Congress, the U.S. Trade
Representative's office said members of the global trade body
needed to fundamentally rethink what it called "an outdated
tariff framework" that no longer reflected economic realities.
USTR delivered a scathing indictment of the WTO in the
338-page document, calling it an organization that had "strayed
far from its original mission and purpose," while highlighting
the Trump administration's push over the past year to confront
what it called China's unfair trade policies and practices.
It said 2019 was "a historic year for American trade" in
which the administration reached trade agreements with China and
Japan, and secured congressional approval of a new North
American trade deal with Mexico and Canada.
It also hailed a WTO decision giving Washington the right to
impose tariffs on $7.5 billion of EU goods in a long-running
dispute over aircraft subsidies to Airbus.
The U.S. government also initiated action against France
over its digital services taxes that Washington says will harm
U.S. tech companies such as Facebook, Alphabet Inc's
Google, Amazon Inc and Apple, the
report said.
Washington and Paris have agreed to a truce staving off
those tariffs through year-end to allow work on broader tax
reforms by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD).
"Going forward, President (Donald) Trump will continue to
rebalance America’s relationship with its trading partners,
aggressively enforce our trade laws, and take prompt action in
response to unfair trade practices by other nations," the report
said.
In addition to pursuing trade agreements with Britain and
the EU, USTR said it would work on trade agreements with new
partners, including Kenya, which would be the first U.S. free
trade deal in sub-Saharan Africa.
It said it also planned to conduct further negotiations with
Japan and China on more comprehensive trade agreements, while
pushing for reforms at the WTO.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Additional reporting by David
Shepardson; editing by Diane Craft and Sonya Hepinstall)