- The Antiguan ambassador has reportedly attempted to open a new round of negotiations with officials of the US Trade Representative’s office.
The tiny Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda’s ongoing World Trade Organization dispute with the United States over online gambling may see the two parties make one more attempt to return to the bargaining table.
The Caribbean news portal Caribbean360 recently cited Antigua’s Minister of Finance, Harold Lovell, as stating that Antiguan ambassador Collin Murdoch has attempted to open a new round of negotiations with officials of the US Trade Representative’s office.
The two countries remain at odds over Antigua’s professed belief that the country has a right to offer online-gambling services to American citizens, dating back to trade deals signed in the late ’90s.
The United States subsequently withdrew from that portion of the previous WTO trade pacts, but repeated decisions by the WTO left Antigua with the right to claim up to $21 million annually by ignoring the copyright protection on US-manufactured goods, an award which the country has since struggled to collect.
The latest monthly meeting of the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body in February offered no active moves on the matter, after Antigua was granted the right, in January, to bring a plan to collect the settlement before the WTO.
Instead, representatives from Antigua’s Caribbean neighbor, Dominica, read a statement on Antigua’s behalf chiding the United States for refusing to take any steps to reach a deal with Antigua and end the dispute.
Several nations also backed Dominica’s separate statement in support of Antigua. Those nations were Haiti, Jamaica, Barbados, Brazil, Cuba, China, and Trinidad and Tobago, which represented the interests of CARICOM, a market group uniting 15 separate Caribbean nations.
