procedures; and improving the

procedures; and improving the transparency and speed of the system for settling disputes. Next, the U.S. needs to keep the WTO current with a vastly changed world economy. The past WTO agreements are valuable for all 158 WTO members. But some economies want to go further by reducing barriers in important sectors such as the services trade, environmental goods and services, government procurement, and the digital economy. The services trade, for example, 1s vital for boosting innovation, productivity and jobs in developing and developed countries alike—but regulatory, licensing, zoning and other barriers to services are often equivalent to a 30% tariff or higher. Because liberalization in the WTO has been stuck, countries have turned increasingly to bilateral and multilateral free-trade agreements, some of which have addressed these newer topics. The U.S. should foster the WTO principle of world-wide liberalization by adopting standards in various industries and sectors that would be open to all economies that reciprocate. The WTO also needs new rules for fair trading by state-owned enterprises. Yet the U.S. also should use free-trade agreements to open markets. Trade competition advances structural reforms HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_029826