WTO wants reform to security exemption used to justify tariffs

TOKYO -- The head of the World Trade Organization has called on member states to negotiate "a more careful definition" of the national security exemption, a provision used by U.S. President Donald Trump to justify a flurry of tariff threats.

Member states are entitled to use the national security exemption, a Cold War-era clause that allows countries to take otherwise WTO-inconsistent actions, under the organization's rules. However they "need to determine what constitutes, really, a national security exception," WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told Nikkei Asia.