US Coordinates With EU, Expands WTO Case on Chinese Export Duties, Quotas on Raw Materials

The U.S. amended a request for World Trade Organization consultations it filed last week, adding chromium to its list of raw materials subject to contested Chinese export duties and a new section on Chinese export quotas for antimony, indium, magnesia, talc and tin, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said in a statement. Vital U.S. sectors use those elements to make aerospace, automotive, construction and electronics products, it said. China’s duties and quotas advantage Chinese industries at the expense of U.S. companies, USTR said. “The restraints we challenged last week, along with the ones we have included today, are part and parcel of the same troubling policy – one that provides advantages for China in important manufacturing sectors at the expense of the rest of the world,” U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said in a statement.

The U.S. complaint covers the same raw materials, export duties and export quotas as a separate EU complaint filed July 19, a U.S. trade official said. The U.S. and EU are undertaking coordinated requests for consultations because they have common views on “rules that all WTO members should respect,” EU Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said during a July 19 press call. If consultations don’t resolve the matter, the EU and U.S. cases will roll into one request for a dispute resolution panel at the WTO, the U.S. trade official said. Malmstrom said a meeting with her Chinese counterpart this week yielded “very little” in the way of results. “These measures are against international trade rules. We do not see China advancing to remove them,” Malmstrom said during the call. “We can, of course, not sit on our hands, seeing our producers and our consumers being hit by unfair trade practices, and we hope that this joint EU-US action will motivate China to reconsider its current policy.”

Email ITTNews@warren-news.com for a copy of USTR's statement.