China lodges tariff case at WTO against US

Beijing will firmly defend legal rights in accordance with WTO rules: commerce ministry

HONG KONG: China has lodged a case against the United States with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) over US import duties, the Chinese commerce ministry said on Monday.

The United States began imposing 15% tariffs on a variety of Chinese goods on Sunday - including footwear, smart watches and flat-panel televisions - as China began imposing new duties on US crude, the latest escalation in a bruising trade war.

The latest tariff actions violated the consensus reached by leaders of China and the US in a meeting in Osaka, the commerce ministry said in the statement. China will firmly defend its legal rights in accordance with WTO rules, it said.

Last month, WTO agreed to China's request to create a dispute panel tasked with judging whether US tariffs on solar panels violated international trade rules.

The trade restrictions were imposed by President Donald Trump's administration last year, part of a raft of measures initiated by Washington which have triggered a tit-for-tat tariff war between the world's top two economies.

China filed its first complaint on the solar panel tariffs at the WTO in August 2018, arguing that the so-called "safeguard measures" were an illegal attempt to protect US producers from foreign competition.

The WTO's decision to set up a dispute settlement panel was a procedural move that followed automatically from China's second request for arbitration. But it came at a time of escalating tension between Washington and Beijing, some of which is centered on the WTO.

At that moment, Trump threatened to pull the US out of the body if conditions were not improved.

He had been especially critical of the terms granted to China when it joined the organisation, including its developing nation status, which Washington argues helps shield China from the scrutiny it merits as a a major economic powerhouse.