World Trade Organization Rules in Favor of US Cases Against China

The World Trade Organization has handed down some decisions on cases between the United States and China that are in favor of the US. American Farm Bureau Federation, Senior Director of Government Affairs, Dave Samuelson.

“There were us had imposed some import tariffs on steel from a variety of countries over and those countries then put retaliatory tariffs on US products right forced us to the negotiating table on these issues. And over time, the US basically settled this issue with the majority of countries establish what are called import quotas for foreign various foreign steel products and moved on from that. But this didn't happen with China. The US basically filed a suit at the WTO against the retaliation that China put on a lot of products- retalitory tariffs, including many US ag products. And now a WTO panel has a rule that the US was in the right China had no legal right to put tariffs on that.”

Due to the fact that the US Steel import duties were implemented under national security. He says WTO found that China did not have a right to retaliate against the US. And although this is a good result, he says there is not a WTO appellate body that can push China into making the corrections. Thus they would have to take the retaliatory tariffs off on their own. In the end, he says this is good for trade law and AFBF is happy with the significance of the outcome.