Geneva. The World Trade Organization (WTO) determined on Friday that the tariffs imposed in 2018 by the United States on steel and aluminum imports by then-President Donald Trump and maintained by the Joe Biden administration contravene global trade rules, in a decision immediately criticized by Washington.
In 2018, Trump imposed tariffs of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum, under Section 232 of a 1962 law that allows the US president to restrict imports if they threaten the security of his country.
Its North American trading partners, Canada and Mexico, were later exempted. Instead, they were upheld for countries like China, Turkey and Switzerland, which brought the case to the WTO.
In one of the highest-profile and potentially controversial cases to reach the 164-country multilateral body, the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body, concluded that the tariffs were inconsistent with various articles of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade ( GATT, for its acronym in English) and recommended that the United States correct it, in accordance with international regulations.
Biden’s response
The committee concluded that the tariffs were not justified by security exceptions
stipulated by Article 21 of the GATT. Either they had been applied in times of war or serious international tensions.
The three-person WTO panel issued its conclusions in the cases brought by China, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey. The cases brought by India and Russia are still pending.
For its part, President Joe Biden’s administration has already reached agreements with the European Union, Japan and the United Kingdom to remove the tariffs and replace them with import quotas under which Trump’s taxes are waived. In exchange, the trading partners removed the retaliatory tariffs against the United States.
Still, the Biden administration criticized the WTO decision. The United States has held the clear and unequivocal position, for more than 70 years, that national security issues cannot be reviewed in WTO dispute settlement.
said Adam Hodge, a spokesman for the Office of the US Trade Representative.