September 11, 2018 - China will ask the World Trade Organization this month for permission to retaliate against the U.S. for failure to comply with a dispute ruling that found some of its anti-dumping rules to be illegal.
On Sept. 21, China will ask the Geneva-based organization to sanction trade retaliation against certain U.S. products, according to a Tuesday statement from the WTO. China previously claimed that it could ask the WTO to approve annual retaliatory trade measures against $8.4 billion in U.S. goods.
The WTO ruled in 2017 that the U.S. actions were illegal and an arbitrator called for compliance by Aug. 22. On Aug. 27, the U.S. acknowledged that it had not fully complied and said it “continued to consult with interested parties on options to address the recommendations” of the dispute settlement body, according to a statement.
The dispute comes as U.S. President Donald Trump is escalating the trade war with China. Last week, Trump said he’s willing to slap tariffs on an additional $267 billion in Chinese goods, on top of duties on $200 billion in imports that the U.S. is already considering. If the president follows through, the threatened tariffs and those already in place would more than cover the value of all goods the U.S. buys from China, according to U.S. government data from last year.
The 2017 ruling concerned U.S. anti-dumping duties imposed on 13 imported Chinese products including machinery, electronics, metals and minerals. The WTO said the U.S. Commerce Department violated international trade rules in the way it applied so-called weighted average-to-transaction and zeroing methodologies in its targeted dumping investigations, according to the text of the ruling.
Source: Bloomberg
