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Washington has appealed four World Trade Organization panel rulings that faulted it for the punitive tariffs former president Donald Trump’s administration imposed on steel imports from China and other countries. online news
The United States announced its decision to appeal during a meeting of the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body on Friday.
Former US president Trump’s administration introduced the tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from China, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey.
Marking a departure from a decades-long US-led drive for free trade, Trump justified the steep tariffs with claims that massive flows of imports to the United States threatened national security.
The administration of his successor, President Joe Biden, has taken a less combative tone but has stuck with the tariffs.
The expert panels the WTO set up in 2018 to settle complaints filed over the tariffs ruled last month that they were inconsistent with various articles of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
The panels also determined that these inconsistencies were not justified by the security exceptions provided for in the GATT, as they were not applied in a time of war or during a case of serious international tension.
US Ambassador Maria Pagan criticised the rulings.
“The United States will not cede decision-making over its essential security to WTO panels,” she said.
“For over 70 years, the United States has held the clear and unequivocal position that issues of national security cannot be reviewed in WTO dispute settlement,” she said.
“The WTO has no authority to second-guess the ability of a WTO member to respond to a wide range of threats to its security,” she insisted.
She said the panel rulings last month were “particularly troubling because they suggest a member may not take action to protect its essential security interests until after irreparable damage is done”.
“The United States cannot support adoption of these fundamentally flawed and damaging reports,” she said, announcing the US decision to appeal.
In the past, the WTO Appellate Body would have had three months to rule on any appeals filed.
But the appeals tribunal — also known as the supreme court of world trade — has been frozen since late 2019, after the United States under Trump blocked the appointment of new judges and demanded a dramatic overhaul.
China’s representative criticised on Friday the US decision to file an appeal.
The representative voiced concern at a situation where a WTO member appeared to have declared itself to be above the law, accusing Washington of acting like a “unilateral bully, a rule breaker and a supply chain disrupter”, according to a Geneva-based trade official.
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