According to the ruling, the trade dispute began in 2012, when China decided to sue the United States at the WTO over the countervailing tariffs the United States imposed on Chinese goods such as solar panels and pressure tubes from 2007 to 2011.
In 2018, the WTO’s high-level dispute mediation court handed down a ruling in the dispute, finding that the U.S. tariffs violated WTO rules. But the two countries failed to agree on the implementation of the ruling and how much compensation China should be allowed to receive through retaliatory tariffs, prompting the case to be brought to a WTO arbitration panel.
World Trade Organization (WTO).
At first, China demanded tariffs on $2.4 billion a year in U.S. imports, before reducing it to about $788 million a year. The United States believes that it should not exceed 106 million US dollars per year.
The WTO ruling of “$645.121 million per year” should be final and the United States cannot appeal the decision.
This decade-long “anti-subsidy tariff case” ended in China’s victory.
Screenshot from Reuters report.
Reuters said this is another victory for China at the WTO.
Bloomberg analysis pointed out that while the $645 million is dwarfed by China’s tariffs on $110 billion worth of US goods under Trump The move will give Beijing new tools to pressure Biden.
Bloomberg pointed out that the Biden administration may try to prevent China from implementing WTO-approved retaliatory tariffs, but it must revise U.S. countervailing duties, which will intensify competition in U.S. steel, aluminum and other key manufacturing industries.
Adam Hodge, a spokesman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, called the WTO’s ruling “deeply disappointing.” He claimed that the WTO needs to reform its own rules and dispute settlement mechanisms, and slandered that China was using these rules and mechanisms to “undermine fair, market-based competition.”
In November 2019, the WTO ruled that China could impose tariffs on $3.6 billion worth of U.S. imports because the U.S. had erroneously imposed dumping duties on Chinese imports.
The U.S. government has long expressed dissatisfaction with the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism, in particular saying it has faced “unfair treatment” in the appeals court. To this end, former U.S. President Trump blocked the appointment of new judges to the appeals court in December 2019, which led to the agency’s subsequent shutdown.
As Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said earlier, in the recent past, individual US politicians have repeatedly slandered China for “not abiding by” the rules. The report of the WTO expert group once again proves that it is the US that is really breaking international rules. From this, it is not difficult to see that the United States is using international organizations to serve its own interests when it comes to the recent actions of the United States towards multilateral international organizations.
Wang Wenbin said that China has always firmly supported and maintained the multilateral trading system with the WTO at its core, and respected the rules and rulings of the WTO. It is hoped that the U.S. side will fully respect the ruling of the expert group and the rules-based multilateral trading system, take concrete actions, and work with WTO members to safeguard the multilateral trading system and promote the stable and healthy development of the world economy.
