The United States largely won a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling on Thursday, which found that China had failed to comply with an earlier ruling against its punitive tariffs on U.S. broiler chickens, Reuters reported.The ruling means Beijing has failed in a bid to use one of Washington’s own favorite trade policy tools – punitive tariffs – against U.S. producers and will be obliged to lower its tariffs, unless it appeals within 20 days.
The United States originally went to the WTO in September 2011, complaining about Chinese anti-dumping and anti-subsidy tariffs. China later lowered the tariffs but Washington claimed it had not done enough to comply.
The initial U.S. complaint followed China’s 2010 imposition of anti-dumping duties of up to 105.4 percent and anti-subsidy duties of up to 30.3 percent on U.S. chicken products. China lowered the duties in 2014 to a maximum of 73.8 percent and 4.2 percent respectively after the WTO ruled in favor of the United States. However, the U.S. Trade Representative said they still broke the rules and went back to the WTO in 2016. By that time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said U.S. poultry producers had lost sales of over $1 billion.
“China expresses regret over the WTO ruling, the country’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement late yesterday, adding that China would assess the WTO report and carry out “follow-up work” in accordance with WTO rules.
Either side can appeal against the compliance ruling.
Senators Chris Coons (D-DE) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA.), co-chairs of the Senate Chicken Caucus, released the following statement in the wake of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) ruling yesterday
“We are very pleased with the World Trade Organization’s decision supporting our position that duties imposed by China on U.S. chicken products are unfair and harmful to American famers. As co-chairs of the Senate Chicken Caucus, we take unfair duties on U.S. poultry very seriously. China has imposed duties on U.S. chicken since 2010 and has been faulted by the WTO for them before. Despite China’s continued efforts to justify these duties, this latest decision from the WTO indicates that their rationale is not effective and their duties are, quite simply, an unfair trade practice. The economic health of America’s agricultural sector is directly tied to its access to foreign markets, and China should be held accountable for failing to abide by international trade agreements and effectively closing their market to American chicken farmers.”
