The European Union has requested a World Trade Organization consultation with the United States to address the imposition of tariffs on Spanish olives in August 2018. The United States reportedly applied countervailing and anti-dumping tariffs of 34.75 percent to the import of Spanish black olives on the grounds that Spanish growers receive benefits from the EU that are unavailable to other growers, such as those in California.
Tag Archives WTO
After the Vietnamese government asked the World Trade Organization (WTO) to discuss U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) restrictions on catfish imports, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer asking him to support repeal of the restrictions. “Since its implementation, the USDA Catfish Inspection Program has done nothing more than erect a damaging trade barrier against Asian catfish imports to protect a handful of domestic catfish farmers in Southern states," the senators wrote. “If the U.S. loses this latest WTO battle, it could negatively impact U.S. agriculture exports to Vietnam, including cotton, wheat, pork, soybeans, beef, poultry, eggs and fruit. Vietnam is one of our largest Asian trading partners and our 10th largest agricultural export market. Additionally, more than 525,000 American jobs directly rely on imported seafood.” McCain and Shaheen have been critics of the catfish restrictions since at least 2013,…
The World Trade Organization (WTO) has ruled that the United States can use the “dolphin-safe” tuna labeling regulations revised in 2016, deciding they are part of a “legitimate conservation effort.” Mexico began the dispute in 2008 when it asserted that U.S. regulations governing tuna fishing in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean were more stringent than in other areas of the world and unfairly barred Mexico’s fishing industry from the market. Although WTO has previously ruled in Mexico’s favor, the new opinion stated that the regulations are “calibrated to the levels of risks posed by different fishing methods in different parts of the ocean, [so] we do not see any reason to find that the same measure is applied in a manner that constitutes a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination.” In April 2017, WTO awarded Mexico $163 million in trade sanctions over the regulations; that award may now be appealed.
The World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) Appellate Body has affirmed an April 2015 ruling that U.S. tuna regulations discriminate against Mexico by requiring “dolphin-safe” labels reflecting the methods used to catch the fish that protect against capture of the mammal. In response to the appellate ruling, the United States criticized the decision as focusing on points that Mexico had not challenged and were merely “hypothetical” and an “academic exercise.” “Panels and the Appellate Body should not make their conception of the ‘perfect’ measure the enemy of all the possible good ones,” according to the U.S. statement provided during the meeting of the WTO Dispute Settlement Body on December 3, 2015. “In pursuing legitimate objectives, Members should not be held to the impossible standard of designing and applying a measure that corresponds exactly to the one that a panel or the Appellate Body would have designed to achieve the legitimate objective at…
Challengers to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s country-of-origin labeling (COOL) rules requiring meat products to indicate where the animals were born, raised and slaughtered reportedly will not continue to pursue their claims, according to a stipulation of dismissal. Am. Meat Inst. v. USDA, No. 13-1033 (D.C., stipulation filed February 9, 2015). The meat and poultry groups lost their First Amendment challenge to the mandatory labeling rules in the D.C. Circuit Court and were later denied a rehearing. The stipulation comes after a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling against the United States in favor of Canada and Mexico, which argue that the rules discriminated against their livestock producers. “While we remain disappointed with the court’s ruling on country of origin labeling (COOL), we agree with the World Trade Organization’s assessment that the U.S. rule is out of compliance with its trade obligations to Canada and Mexico,” North American Meat Institute CEO…
The World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) Appellate Body has affirmed its August 2013 decision condemning Argentina’s broad trade-related restrictions affecting a variety of goods and food products. In one case that the WTO considered, Argentine government officials approved an agreement with a firm that imported Porsche vehicles that would require the company to offset the imports by exporting the same value of wine and olive products each year; in another, Pirelli was required to export $100 million worth of honey to import its tires. The Argentine Secretary of Domestic Trade also apparently limited the 2012 importation of finished ham products, especially those from Spain and Italy, to 80 percent of the amount imported the previous year. Affected goods also included clothing, medicine, technology products, and Bibles. “The United States welcomes the WTO’s findings in this dispute,” U.S. Trade Representative Michael Frohman said in a statement. “Argentina’s protectionist measures impact a broad…
The United States has appealed the World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) ruling in favor of Canada and Mexico in a dispute over U.S. country-of-origin labeling (COOL) regulations requiring pork and beef products originating outside the United States to carry labels specifying their sources. The appeal notification circulated to WTO members indicated that the United States has challenged several of the panel’s findings, including that the detrimental impact does not stem exclusively from legitimate regulatory distinctions because “the amended COOL measure entails an increased recordkeeping burden and increased segregation,” “the current labels provided by the amended COOL measure have a potential for label inaccuracy,” and “the amended COOL measure continues to exempt a large proportion of muscle cuts.” Appeals are heard by three members of a permanent seven-member appellate body unaffiliated with any government, and the appellate body generally has three months to conclude its report. Additional information on the WTO panel’s…
Confirming early reports discussed in Issue 536 of this Update, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has again ruled in favor of Canada and Mexico regarding U.S. country-of-origin labeling (COOL) regulations requiring pork and beef products originating outside of the United States to bear labels indicating where each step in the production process occurred. The compliance panel found that the measure “accords to Canadian and Mexican livestock less favorable treatment than that accorded to like US livestock.” The panel also found that the rule’s 2013 amendment “increases the original COOL measure’s detrimental impact on the competitive opportunities of important livestock in the US market, because it necessitates increased segregation of meat and livestock according to origin; entails a higher recordkeeping burden; and increases the original COOL measure’s incentive to choose domestic over imported livestock.” Following the decision’s release, Mexican and Canadian trade officials issued a joint statement calling the COOL rule “a…
Senior executives from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) and U.S. Chamber of Commerce have co-authored an October 14, 2014, letter to members of Congress urging the lawmakers to “authorize and direct the Secretary of Agriculture to rescind elements of [country-of-origin labeling (COOL)] that have been determined to be noncompliant with international trade obligations by a final [World Trade Organization (WTO)] adjudication.” Citing Americans’ jobs as a primary concern, the executives argue that the regulations requiring muscle cuts of meat to include COOL would harm the United States’ relationship with its neighbors. “We are especially concerned that, should the WTO litigation conclude with a ruling of noncompliance by the United States, Congress would be unable to amend the statute prior to Canada and Mexico, our two largest export markets, instituting WTO-authorized retaliation against U.S. exports,” the letter said. “The history is clear. Buyer supply chain needs result in export markets being…
A World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement panel has found that a series of food safety restrictions imposed by the Indian government on imports of U.S. poultry products was based on the inaccurate proposition that U.S. poultry was more likely to carry bird flu. India failed to distinguish between high-pathogenic bird flu that had not been found in the United States since 2004 and a low-pathogenic strain that had appeared in the country, the WTO panel found, so it rejected the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. The United States initially challenged the import restriction in 2012 following complaints from chicken farmers accusing the Indian government of unfairly shielding its poultry producers from foreign competition. India has 60 days to challenge the panel’s findings, and if it does, the WTO Appellate Body will have 90 days to issue a report on the dispute. Issue 541
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