 Thank you. My name is Douglas Paul. I'm from Carnegie and Downwood, Washington, D.C. In recent months in various forums, US Trade Representative Lighthizer has said that from his experience, the WTO was never outfitted with the tools to manage a mercantilist approach to the economy that China now brings and that China does this in such a sweeping challenging scale that the US should work to fundamentally readdress the principles on which the WTO is founded. I'd be interested in your reaction to that characterization. Well, I don't think the US is going to leave the multilateral system because the system itself was created by the US seven decades ago and it worked in the US national interest in the past. But I understand that the US or the current administration wants to improve it and make it working more efficiently and for their interests. But it's up to our members to make decisions how they reform the system and as for China, I think it's important to personally, I think it's important to engage China and work China within the system instead of a confrontation outside of the global system. It's my personal view. Minister. Well, regarding the multilateral trading system, the Deputy Director General already mentioned the decision-making process at the WTO requires consensus, but it has been working quite all right until a certain time period. Now, given the power shipped in the world economy, the two, you know, many, many different emerging countries are confronting with the United States and EU. That means you never have any consensus on any difficult issues. That's the kind of thing we got stuck with. If you go to IMF and World Bank, there's a board system. They have a weighted voting so that they can have some kind of solution. But at the WTO, one country, one board requires consensus. That means we must admit it'll be awfully, awfully difficult to make any kind of sensitive decision. This is how we, you know, prolong for 16 years to conclude even Doha round. I mean, we never had that kind of occasion before on the GET system. So that's the problem we have to solve. Yes? Only briefly, I think what we really have to get used to is that we live in a world of global governance which is mainly shaped by the United States with some assistance of the European Union. And now we have new forces who claim that they also would like to shape global governance to a certain degree. So if I think, if we want to maintain global governance structures, we somehow have to react on that. We have to, as you said, engage in a discussion on how to change it, how to reform it. And we as Americans and the European Union, I think, need a consensus on how far we are willing to go and where the limits are of the adjustments we are willing to make. We're forgot to make a holistic effort, we're forgot to the role of state-owned enterprises, we're forgot of government subsidies. So I still hope that there's some willingness on the Trump administration to have this dialogue between Washington and Brussels, because if we do it on our own, then we have an up in real trouble. And so I would really have very much argue for finding a new consensus in this, how to deal with China. The lady in the front, yes, and then... Well, thank you. As you have said hello, we ambassador at large of His Majesty, Mohammed VI. My question goes to Stéphane Maire. You have suggested as potential answers to the rising protectionism to improve governance, both supranational government in Europe and, of course, to Eileen WTO address its woes. My question is how you do that at a moment where Europe is totally reluctant to any strengthening of its supranational, you have even said the word, you know, move. And second, do you think that what we call the couple of Franco-Allemands is strong enough to address this issue? And second, what would be the chances to get there knowing, you know, that the populist are basically against any kind of reinforcing, you know, Europe? The other question is related, of course, to WTO and which is much more recent than the historic international organization, but which is totally, are we condemned to paralysis? What you, as deputy director general, are proposing? So are we going to be prisoner, you know, of this consensus impossible to reach forever? And as far as the reforms of the international organization, the economic organizations, we do know it's been on the agenda for quite a long time. Everybody's aware of the discrepancy and anachronism between their functioning and the requirements of the changing and evolving. So what are the suggestions, except of saying that we are in a sort of quagmire and that we have to get Trump's administration and the EU and the major throwing? Of course, knowing that the voiceless, who is the third world and even the emerging countries, have no say in this respect. So what are potential avenues to get out of this total, you know, blockade? Shall I read the excellent points? Yes. Sure. Go ahead. I might be more positive on the European Union than the majority of the people here in the hall. I think that we have really a great chance next year to restart it. So we saw the victory of a French president, which clearly had an anti-publicist agenda, countering the main demands, and he won the elections. And of course, we have now in Germany, a right wing party in parliament, but still a very broad consensus about the major parties, about the pro-European policy. And as far as I see, we have the chance beginning of next year to revive the European Union, to restart the discussion on how we would like to shape it. And Brexit might help to a certain degree, because many members of the European Union are about to learn what it means to leave the European Union and not to have it. But this won't be sufficient, as I said. I think it's very important to strengthen supranational efforts within the European Union, but also to enforce the dialogue with other partners. And here, we still leave it mainly to the member states to do so. And we have also strengthened the European Union to do so. And not only, of course, to talk to our classical traditional partner, but also to look beyond and see who else might have an interest in strengthening global governance. And who might have proposals we can agree to, or we at least have to discuss. So I'm a little bit more positive than your questions. Tempted. Can I just add something? Both of the questions have a kind of commonality of what do we do in a period of lack of leadership. I think that given the problems the WTO has moving forward and the difficulties that the United States and China have in the economic relationship, I think there's a case for the U.S. and China to basically take it outside the WTO and settle these issues bilaterally. For example, we have in the WTO right now the issue of China market economy status. I personally think it's overestimated because of the nature of protection in the United States. Whether you grant China MES or not is not going to have dramatic impact on market access, but it's an issue. I think you could see a situation where the United States and China just say, look, we're major powers, we're going to settle this. And you could have in the case of MES, for example, you would grant MES in sectors where China looks like it's really marketized and you wouldn't grant it in sectors where state-owned enterprises have a dominant position. And you can kind of go through and in return, you know, you would have the United States granting some constraints on the application of anti-dumping and countervailing duties. The real risk is if China pushes a case like this through the WTO, that the United States will not comply and in the end, the Trump administration could simply pull the U.S. out. I don't think that's likely. I want to be very clear I'm not predicting this, but I would also simply observe that under current law, the president of the United States could pull the U.S. out of the WTO without any congressional oversight. So I think given the sort of dysfunction in the WTO, it is a very risky game for China to really press these cases with the United States. I think it would be better, frankly, given the condition of the WTO to settle it amongst ourselves. Francis, you wanted to add something. So in relation to the ambassador's last question, I think this is an extraordinarily important issue. It's a major, major issue. The whole multilateral system architecture is frozen. And this is across all organizations. It's not just the WTO and cannot find the way to move forward. And I think that we really have to address this because at the same time, never have problems been more global in nature and therefore more in need of multilateral solutions. So three suggestions, small suggestions are first, maybe we have to accept a multispeed system. OK, so that's a heresy in traditional terms. We've moved the whole international community forward over the past 60, 70 years together so that everyone is comfortable. Maybe we have to accept now that you can have a multispeed system. And that means that you would permit plural pluralism within multilateralism. So if some groups of member states want to go forward or do something, then I think that should be permitted, provided it doesn't unduly damage the interests of the others. Now, that's again a major change and to the system. And then, thirdly, I think that we are seeing a change in the nature of international cooperation. You know, for 100 years or more, the instrument of cooperation was the treaty. And in today's networked world, platforms can be as important as treaties. And it's much easier to get a cooperation underway with a platform. Those who want to join it, join it. And so I think we should perhaps think in these terms as well. What really paralyzes the system is trying to reach a multilateral treaty agreement. So. Oh, thank you very much. You know, this is my name is Sano Jones Day of Tokyo. Well, that's my question is the based on the my previous experience as a negotiator is in the Ugra around. I think the biggest success in the Ugra around is the establishment of dispute settlement or any kind of the treaty or contract agreement. Final enforcement should be done by there's some kind of dispute settlement mechanism itself. Now, there's a two issue. One thing is about the dispute settlement issue of the WTO. And also this is what another jeopardizing thing is the, as Mr. Mayer said, that ISDS agreement or the mechanism. These two should be this one of what is some kind of the final result to solve a certain kind of question. The protectionism itself is not just against the liberalization or something like that. Important thing is we need to have such kind of legal infrastructure. It seems to me right now that's according to well reading some kind of newspaper that the upper body of dispute settlement mechanism is in WTO. It's really jeopardized by not having all the nominees in the WTO its upper body. I think you have the seven members or some and already three is completed absent. And it's maybe next year that would be it is just only three in the out of seven the members of the upper body. This is if I'm correct. And that completely parallelize the such a dispute settlement mechanism is one thing. And about ISDS the in the TPP we try to have ISDS but to my to my knowledge TPP 11 some of the countries is try to just delete the such a ISDS issue. And the same thing in in NAFTA. OK. It is the one of the ISDS another one is arbitration the mechanism of the entire anti-dumping and countervailing due to issue which is both this quite important the chapter is in NAFTA but that is completely challenged. And so the many of the what to say now the FTAs or the some of the bilateral the investment agreement and so on. The ISDS cannot be the really centerpiece of the treaty now. How do you think about that? This is from the business side from Maya. And it's from Mr. E. What's going on is on WTO in that kind of issue. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yes. Shall I react on this. I think we made a decision in Europe right now to separate investment protection from trade policy. Then the future trade agreements we will have will be mainly on trade and we will deal with investment protection separately. On the other hand I think we have also a really major issue of innovation our CETA treaty our agreement with Canada where we created a kind of international investment court dealing with ISDS and we learned that this is more acceptable to our critical public to have that so not to leave it to really private structures but to have the states have a strong say in and how to set up this court. And this is certainly an innovation we proposed to the United States in the context of TTIP and which we will certainly also propose to Japan in our trade agreement with Japan and all the others we will negotiate. We think this is a major issue of innovation we have. Yes you wanted to add one quick one. Yeah I mean about ISDS it's not the same for all kind of ISDS because Korea US FTA included ISDS but we attach a lot of conditions so private companies cannot sue the government for certain areas especially social policies like environment and labor policies so attaching that kind of conditions ISDS could be a good foundation to protect the investors but if you just simply you know include ISDS maybe domestic constituencies are not supporting that kind of inclusion. OK you wanted to add one last words. Let me see. Yes very short. First of all I would encourage our members to resolve the crisis on everybody member issue. I think it's in all of their interest. And secondly I think the multilateral dispute settlement mechanism is working much more efficiently than RTAs because we checked all the dispute settlement mechanism or provisions in RTAs were very rarely used but if you check WTO record we in the in the past 21 years we handled more than 500 disputes very efficiently. Thank you all. Thank you very much. Thank you for attending and thank you for your great questions.