Earlier this month, President Joe Biden issued an executive order, “Memorandum on Advancing the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Persons Around the World,” directing U.S. government entities to “pursue an end to violence and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or sex characteristics.”
2021/02/19 15:04 PLA Navy sailors PLA Navy sailors (AP photo) TAIPEI (Taiwan News) The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) on Thursday (Feb. 18) held an online hearing, with a number of scholars and former U.S. government officials discussing how to deter China from invading Taiwan. USCC member Alex Wong (黃之瀚), who visited Taiwan in 2018 as the U.S. State Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, asked at the hearing where the Taiwan Strait ranks in terms of triggering a U.S.-China conflict. Thomas Shugart, an adjunct Senior Fellow with the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security, said that he would put the strait in first place. His reasons were the civil war between the Kuomintang (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) did not technically end and China has not invested many resources into South China Sea
.
WASHINGTON Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian economist and former finance minister, is poised to become the first woman and first African to lead the World Trade Organization, when the members of the global trade body meet Monday to consider her candidacy for director-general.
The appointment would remove a key obstacle to the functioning of the WTO, which has been leaderless during a time of growing protectionism and global economic upheaval brought about by the pandemic. But even with Okonjo-Iweala at the helm and the renewed support of the Biden administration, the WTO, which was founded in 1995 to ensure that trade flows as smoothly and freely as possible, will face steep challenges surrounding its effectiveness as the world’s trade arbiter.
The New York Times is reporting this week that Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a Nigerian economist and former finance minister, is poised to become the first woman and first African to lead the World Trade Organization when it meets this week to consider her candidacy for director general.
POLITICO
Get the Weekly Trade newsletter
Email
Sign Up
By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or updates from POLITICO and you agree to our privacy policy and terms of service. You can unsubscribe at any time and you can contact us here. This sign-up form is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Presented by
With help from Doug Palmer and Sarah Anne Aarup
Editor’s Note: Weekly Trade is a weekly version of POLITICO Pro’s daily Trade policy newsletter, Morning Trade. POLITICO Pro is a policy intelligence platform that combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day’s biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.