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. […]
“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 violates WTO rules. Läs artikel