WTO Delays Decision on Byrd Amendment Sanctions
The World Trade Organization (WTO) today announced that it has delayed its decision regarding the level of sanctions that may be imposed on the United States as a result of its failure to repeal the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000, commonly known as the Byrd Amendment.
The decision by the WTO arbitration panel had been expected today, but European Union (EU) officials said they had been told the verdict would be delayed.
Brazil, Chile, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Canada and Mexico, have sought from the WTO the right to impose retaliatory sanctions on the U.S. because the U.S. Congress had not repealed the Byrd Amendment by the WTO's December 27 December 2003 deadline. The WTO had previously found the Byrd Amendment to violate various aspects of the WTO Agreement in January 2003. The eight complainants have claimed that sanctions are the only tool left to them to get the U.S. to comply with the WTO ruling.
In January 2004 the U.S. requested that a WTO arbitration panel decide what punitive measures would be imposed. While the eight complainants did not quantity the specific amount of sanctions that they would want imposed, the sanctions are likely to be equivalent to the amount that the U.S. Government has already paid to U.S. petitioners in antidumping cases (currently more than US$700 million).
|posted by Douglas N. Jacobson| Permalink 
