China's Reaction at WTO

China severely chastised the United States for its decision to levy high tariffs on imports of several major items from China, including 100 percent tariffs on electric vehicles, lithium batteries, photovoltaic cells, key minerals, semiconductors, steel and aluminum, port cranes, personal protective equipment, and other products.

In announcing completion of its review of the Section 301 tariffs imposed on Chinese products by the previous administration, President Biden announced the tariffs are being increased on $18 billion worth of Chinese products.

China hit back against the latest US tariffs, saying they are being imposed “out of domestic political considerations, the US has abused the 301 tariff review process, further increased the 301 tariffs on some Chinese products, and politicized and instrumentalized economic and trade issues, which is a typical political manipulation. China expresses strong dissatisfaction with this.”

WTO Violation

Beijing said the “WTO has already ruled that 301 tariffs violate WTO rules. Instead of correcting it, the US has stuck to its course and made repeated mistakes.”

According to China’s Commerce Ministry, “the increase of 301 tariffs by the US side violates President Biden's commitment of ‘not seeking to suppress or contain China's development’ or ‘not seeking to decouple and break the chain’ from China, and is also not in line with the spirit of consensus reached by the two heads of state, which will seriously affect the atmosphere of bilateral cooperation.”

The Chinese commerce ministry urged “the US side should immediately correct its wrong actions and cancel the additional tariff measures against China. China will take resolute measures to safeguard its own rights and interests.”

However, there is not going to be any easy and prompt resolution of this issue at the WTO as the enforcement function of the trade body has been made dysfunctional for the past six years after the United States blocked filling vacancies of the Appellate Body, the highest legal arm for resolving global trade disputes since December 2019.