WTO allows China to impose $3.6 billion sanctions on US
n an anti-dumping dispute, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on Friday allowed China to impose $3.6 billion worth of punitive tariffs on the United States in a case which argued that some of US anti-dumping rules were illegal.
The decision gives China a go-ahead to ask the WTO’s dispute settlement body to authorise retaliatory tariffs on US goods.
This move by WTO comes at a time when China is engaged in a big trade standoff with the US. The two sides have recently imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods on each other, although not through the WTO’s dispute resolution system.
China had filed the complaint with WTO nearly six years ago seeking nearly $7 billion in retaliation, over anti-dumping tariffs placed by the US on more than 40 Chinese goods.
As per the document released on Friday on the Geneva-based organizations’ website, the damages awarded are the third highest in WTO history.
However, WTO’s authorisation amounts merely about half of what China was seeking in dispute due to China’s failure to comply with an Appellate Body decision on antidumping investigations.