WTO finds for South Korea over U.S. trade measures, in challenge for Biden

01/21/2021

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Reuters Staff

GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Trade Organization recommended on Thursday that the United States revise a series of duties imposed in the pre-Trump era on South Korea, presenting new U.S. President Joe Biden with a dilemma.

A day after Biden’s inauguration, his new administration faces a test of its multilateral credentials, with a choice between complying with the WTO ruling or lodging an appeal to put the case into a legal void.

The United States has up to 60 days to appeal. If it does so, the case would enter a legal limbo because the Trump administration paralysed the WTO’s Appellate Body by blocking appointments and leaving it with too few adjudicators to rule.

The duties were imposed on four grades of steel in 2016 and on large power transformers in 2012 under the administration of Donald Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama, whose vice president Biden was.

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