At a meeting of the World Trade Organization Committee on Balance-of-Payments Restrictions held May 5 in Geneva, the U.S. said it is ready to enter into consultations within the committee next month to discuss the 10 percent tariff that it established effective Feb. 24 under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. This tariff is slated to be in place through 12:01 a.m. EDT on July 24 unless extended by an act of Congress.
The U.S. notified the imposition of this tariff to the WTO on March 20 and now welcomes consultations with other WTO members on the balance-of-payment reasons that motivated its establishment (the Trump administration has argued that fundamental international payments problems required special import measures to restrict imports to deal with large and serious U.S. BOP deficits). Any such consultations would take place under the umbrella of the Committee on Balance-of-Payments Restrictions with the participation of the International Monetary Fund, which would opine on whether a BOP crisis actually exists.
The WTO indicated in a May 5 press release that members welcomed the U.S.’s transparency and recognized that recourse to BOP measures is provided for under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994, although they “raised concerns about the necessity of the measures and their impact on global trade.”
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