Brussels incensed as US spurns global trade rules (yet again)
Europe reacts after Washington’s latest swipe against the World Trade Organization for ruling against Trump-era steel and aluminum tariffs.
Brussels is fuming at Washington’s latest insult against the World Trade Organization as a forum to resolve trade fights.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai lashed out at the international trade body Monday for ruling against former U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
She said that the WTO is walking on “very, very thin ice” when it judged that a democracy like the U.S. didn’t have solid national security reasons for imposing tariffs on metal coming from China, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey.
It's another sign that what's left of internationally recognized trade rules are eroding as geopolitical tensions run high between the U.S., China and the EU, European lawmakers and experts say.
“The USA’s reaction of simply rejecting the ruling is incomprehensible,” said Bernd Lange, who chairs the European Parliament's international trade committee.
“We have to have an honest discussion with the U.S. if they are moving away from a rules-based trading system, and if and how we can rescue the existing system," said Lange, of the center-left Socialists & Democrats group.
Brussels had hoped that Washington’s bullying of the WTO would come to an end when President Joe Biden, a Democrat, stepped into the White House in January last year. But that didn’t happen:
The Biden administration also questions the relevance of the multilateral trade forum because of its systemic rivalry with China, which is also a WTO member.
“A lot of people in Europe and Geneva have completely misunderstood ... that the United States have already moved on — they are already in a post-WTO reality,” said Hosuk Lee-Makiyama from the Brussels-based economic think tank ECIPE. He cites as proof Biden’s multi-billion incentive package for Americans to buy green technology that’s made in the U.S., which experts agree
WTO rules.
“If everyone starts using 'national security reasons' to protect economic interests, then this exception becomes the rule,” said Luisa Santos from the industry group BusinessEurope. “A country’s international commitments become meaningless and trade quite uncertain.”
Tai’s disparaging comments about the recent ruling don’t bode well either for ongoing discussions in Geneva about how to reform the WTO.
“I don't see how the U.S. can be serious about maintaining the institution if it is not prepared to support the one mechanism that is designed to make sure that everybody plays by the rules,” said Lorand Bartels, an international law professor at the University of Cambridge. “I think that the U.S. barely cares about the WTO.”
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I am going to f*cking enjoy when the Europeans start using protectionism rules against US companies or they apply their own version of the foreign direct product rule against US companies who sell items to countries that the Europeans don't like. I going to be absolutely hilarious.