Please support the Ministry’s public relations work: We need your consent to be able to measure your user activity on our website using etracker. A pseudonymised evaluation of this data by etracker helps us to improve our website. You can revoke your consent at any time for the future. Once you have made your selection, the consent management screen will appear at the bottom of the page. You can use this to stop or to reactivate the statistical evaluation at any point. You can reactivate tracking by dragging the slider in the opposite direction.
This website sets temporary session cookies. These are strictly necessary and therefore cannot be deselected. Their sole purpose is to enable you to use the website.
The Ministry also presents its work on this website in the form of videos. These are made available by the provider TV1 using JW Player. Please consent to the transmission of your IP address and other technical data to JW Player and allow JW Player to set cookies on your end device if you wish to view videos on our website. We also provide a consent management function for this at the bottom of the page. You can use this to control whether JW Player is enabled or not.
You can find detailed information on your rights and how we protect your privacy in our privacy policy.
Consent to the use of JW Player for video streaming
The Ministry also presents its work on this website in the form of videos. These are made available by the provider TV1 using JW Player. Please consent to the transmission of your IP address and other technical data to JW Player and allow JW Player to set cookies on your end device if you wish to view videos on our website. We also provide a consent management function for this at the bottom of the page. You can use this to control whether JW Player is enabled or not.
From 28 to 29 October 2023, the G7 Trade Ministers met in Osaka, Japan, to exchange views on current trade-policy challenges. The focus was on strengthening global value chains and securing a level playing field. The participants also discussed how the G7 should deal with coercive economic measures, the intensity of which has recently increased. In addition to the Group of Seven, the ministers of Australia, Chile, India, Indonesia and Kenya as important partners of the G7, and senior representatives of international organisations, including the WTO and the OECD, attended part of the meeting.
State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action Udo Philipp attended the meeting on behalf of the German federal government. On the margins of the meeting, he also held a number of talks with high-ranking representatives from India, the United States and Chile.
State Secretary Philipp said: "In times of fundamental changes in the global economy and new geostrategic challenges, close cooperation of the G7 both within and outside the WTO is very important. Resilient supply chains and the necessary reform of the WTO in the interest of all of its members requires alliances, also beyond the G7. It is therefore helpful that a number of important partner countries have also attended the G7 meeting."
In the G7 Trade Ministers’ Statement, the G7 underline the important role of world trade and the WTO for the recovery of the global economy and the strengthening of sustainable global supply chains. State Secretary Philipp said: "Global rules need to be enforceable. The WTO therefore urgently needs to re-establish a functioning dispute settlement system. At the upcoming WTO Ministerial Conference, the G7 will be a strong advocate of this." The participants also agreed to call for an extension of the Moratorium on Customs Duties on Electronic Transmission and a work programme on trade and industrial subsidies at the WTO.
Furthermore, the G7 discussed the need for the creation of a level playing field in view of an increase in non-market-based practices, including forced technology transfer, market-distorting subsidies and unfair competition by state-owned and state-controlled companies. The G7 intend to address this problem, not least by improving international rules.
Further important issues include closer cooperation to combat economic coercion – by means of an intensive exchange on coercive measures, and better coordination possibilities, digital trade, and the contributions of trade policy to attain the internationally agreed climate and environmental goals.
