GENEVA — On November 21, 2018, the United States and China confronted each other at a World Trade Organization meeting in a sharp exchange over tariffs, trade policy and the limits of the WTO rulebook.
The dispute came as legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s metal tariffs moved into a formal adjudication stage. Trump had already angered trading partners by imposing duties on steel and aluminum on national security grounds, while also slapping heavy tariffs on Chinese goods over allegations of intellectual property theft.
U.S. Ambassador Dennis Shea told the meeting that China was using the WTO to push “non-market” policies that had distorted global markets and contributed to excess capacity, especially in steel and aluminum. A Chinese official pushed back, saying Washington had not supported its “unfounded” claims and was instead trying to mask its own breaches of WTO rules.
Both delegations accused the other of double standards. Shea argued that the WTO should dismiss China’s case, along with complaints filed by the European Union, Canada, Mexico, Norway, Russia and Turkey, because WTO rules allow national security exceptions. In remarks provided to Reuters, he said concerns that such an approach would weaken the trading system were “erroneous, and completely backwards.” He added that the real threat was China’s attempt to use the dispute system to block action against what he called unfair, trade-distorting policies.
The United States also opened its own case against retaliatory measures imposed by Canada, Mexico, China and the EU, all of which say Trump’s metal tariffs amount to disguised U.S. protectionism. A second U.S. official told the meeting, “The United States cannot abide this level of hypocrisy.”
China responded by pointing to unresolved WTO disputes, including a 2004 ruling against a U.S. violation of the WTO agreement on trade related aspects of intellectual property, or TRIPS. The Chinese official said the United States had delayed implementation of that ruling for more than 14 years and argued that Washington could not credibly claim superior intellectual property protection while failing to meet its own obligations. “China has fully complied with the TRIPS agreement while the U.S. has not,” the official said.
The Chinese side also repeated that Washington had not substantiated its claims about China’s economy and was using them to conceal its own rulebook violations. “The statement made by the U.S. reeks of hypocrisy,” the official said.
A Reuters file image from July 1, 2013 showed a worker driving a forklift to move aluminum bars at a factory in Anshun, Guizhou province, China, underscoring the industrial backdrop to the wider steel and aluminum dispute.
Reporting by Tom Miles; editing by Richard Balmforth.
