This one was simmering for a while. Just got the news from USTR (they send me press releases for some reason):

The Office of the United States Trade Representative announced today that the United States requested the World Trade Organization (WTO) to establish a dispute settlement panel regarding China’s export restraints on numerous raw materials critical to U.S. manufacturers and workers. The materials at issue are: bauxite, coke, fluorspar, magnesium, manganese, silicon metal, silicon carbide, yellow phosphorus, and zinc, key inputs for numerous downstream products in the steel, aluminum, and chemical sectors across the globe.

The United States and the European Union requested formal consultations with China at the WTO on June 23, 2009, and Mexico filed its consultations request on August 21, 2009. Today, the European Union and Mexico are joining the United States in requesting the establishment of a WTO dispute settlement panel regarding this matter.

I hope I have time to review this stuff over the next couple of days. The USTR statement goes on to cite a few provisions of the GATT, and my cursory reading of the first one (Article XI:1) made me confused as it does not appear to say what the USTR claims it says. Then again, it’s late at night, I’m hopped up on milk chocolate and coffee, I’ve never reviewed a case concerning export restrictions before, and I could be missing something.

Some reflection might be a good idea before I spout off with some half-baked criticism of the case, so hopefully I’ll have more on this later.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 3:00 am and is filed under International Trade, U.S.-China Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.