ASEM Meeting Attacks US Steel Tariffs

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

20 September 2002

Meeting in Copenhagen, trade and economy ministers from the 25 countries of ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting) attacked the protective steel tariffs imposed by the US last March.

ASEM brings together the fifteen member states of the EU with ten Asian countries: Brunei, China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.

"The ministers shared their serious concern about the safeguard measures on steel taken by the US government," said Bertel Haarder, Danish minister of European affairs (Denmark currently holds the presidency of the EU). "The US measures, clearly inconsistent with WTO rules, should be eliminated immediately."

EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy told reporters: "At the end of the day these protectionist US measures will be removed, which I have no doubt will come at an early stage."

The US tariffs have come in for widespread criticism, and are the subject of WTO proceedings brought by the EU, Japan and seven other countries. The US has already partially back-tracked on the tariffs by agreeing more than 700 exclusions which cover about a quarter of the targeted steel imports. Further movement is however unlikely until after US congressional elections set for November, and may then depend on the make-up of the new Congress.

Last Monday, the WTO set up an expert panel to review US complaints about quota and other safeguards imposed by the European Union in the steel dispute. The US complained that the EU had not shown that its industry was suffering, or could suffer due to an upsurge in steel imports caused by trade diverted as a result of the US tariffs.

The ASEM event, held annually, gave a strong endorsement of the WTO's Doha trade round. "The ASEM partners agreed on the great importance of the Doha Development Agenda; a successful result of this process is beneficial to all countries," Haarder said. The ASEM countries urged all WTO members to reinforce their efforts in the Doha round in order that the 2004 deadline could be met.

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