US Announces Appeal Against WTO Steel Tariffs

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

13 August 2003

It emerged on Monday that the United States has filed a request for an appeal against the recently released World Trade Organisation report, which examined its protective tariffs on steel imports.

Speaking to the Associated Press, a WTO spokesman revealed that the appeal request was lodged just hours before a meeting scheduled to formally adopt the WTO report. An appeals body is now expected to rule on the case later this year.

Although President Bush has argued that the tariffs were necessary in order to protect the ailing US steel industry as it restructured, the 1,000 page WTO report published in July announced that the United States had failed to prove that the industry had been harmed by a flood of cheap imports, which is a precondition for the imposition of safeguard duties.

The World Trade Organization also noted that the US government had acted improperly by excluding from the tariffs imports from countries with which it has free trade agreements, such as Canada and Mexico.

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