EU, others tell WTO of plans to hit back at US tariffs

BELGIUM: The European Union, Britain, Japan and India have informed the World Trade Organization they are considering slapping duties on some US products to counter President Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminium.

In documents submitted to the global trade body over the past month and seen by AFP on Wednesday, the countries said they were entitled to respond after Trump in March hiked tariffs on US trading partners and announced 25-percent sector-specific levies on steel and aluminium.

That marked an extension of the tariffs first imposed in 2018 during Trump’s first stint in the White House.

The three countries and the EU separately informed the global trade body that they believed the US duties amounted to an improper use of so-called safeguard measures.

Washington has rejected that the new duties are safeguard measures, which are generally only permitted to protect home-grown industries from sudden import increases that harm domestic players.

“Notwithstanding the United States’ characterisation of these measures as security measures, they remain safeguard measures,” the EU said in its notification to the WTO, dated April 16.

The bloc said that given a 30-day notification period, it planned to suspend “concessions and other obligations” under an international agreement on safeguards in relation to the United States as of May 16.

The EU said it was entitled to do so “because the United States’ safeguard measures do not conform to the Agreement on Safeguards”.

It charged that the US measures affected at least 1.4 billion euros worth of goods originating in the bloc, with 215 million in duties expected to be collected.

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And it vowed to impose 25-percent tariffs on a long line of similar products from the United States, impacting goods worth 846 million euros ($948 million) originating in the United States.

India, Britain and Japan made similar arguments in their notifications sent to WTO since last Friday.

India, one of the world’s largest crude steel producers, maintained that the US measures would affect $7.6 billion worth of goods originating in India, with $1.91 billion in duties expected to be collected.

“Accordingly, India’s proposed suspension of concessions would result in an equivalent amount of duty collected from products originating in the United States,” it said, without specifying what kinds of products it might hit with tariffs.

The British notification also indicated that it considered the new tariffs an inappropriate use of safeguard measures and was prepared to hit the United States with duties in retaliation.

But that notice was received by the WTO on May 8 — the same day Trump unveiled a trade agreement with Britain — and was likely to be revised.

That deal, the first the Trump administration reached with any country since unleashing a blitz of sweeping global tariffs, specifically focused on relief from the duties on British cars, steel and aluminium.