The World Trade Organization announced the Appellate Body’s ruling on Friday, which essentially bars counties from imposing the “double dipping” duties in retaliation for dumping. The Appellate Body also affirmed that when a state had majority ownership of an enterprise this made it necessarily a “pubic body.”
Long story short, While the US is not happy, both rulings seem to be reasonable. On the second issue this is only logical. When the government owns a private business it is not really private.
The first issue however, is a little more interesting. The US was making the case that when imposing retaliatory tariffs against a country (in this case China) they should be able to impose tariffs based on both the Antidumping Agreement and the Agreement on Subsides. The US was essentially punishing China twice for the same crime. The US wasn’t even claiming that they weren’t doing this but that they should be allowed to. From what I understand this would be like charging a traffic violator twice for the same incident. At the risk of (shutter) siding with China – this seems to be patently unfair and the WTO has now affirmed that this is explicitly disallowed.
While USTR Ron Kirk is “deeply troubled” by the ruling and has gone on to say “it appears to be a clear case of overreaching by the Appellate Body. We are reviewing the findings closely in order to understand fully their implications,” it seems to be that the AB got it just right.
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