The United States has filed five separate complaints at the World Trade Organization (WTO) challenging retaliatory tariffs imposed by China, Canada, Mexico, Turkey and the European Union, following American duties on steel and aluminum.
US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer made the announcement on Monday, saying retaliatory tariffs on up to a combined $28.5 billion worth of US exports are illegal under WTO rules.
“These tariffs appear to breach each WTO member’s commitments under the WTO Agreement,” Lighthizer said in a statement.
“The United States will take all necessary actions to protect our interests, and we urge our trading partners to work constructively with us on the problems created by massive and persistent excess capacity in the steel and aluminum sectors,” he added.
Lighthizer’s office has maintained that the tariffs the United States has imposed on imports of steel and aluminum are acceptable under WTO rules because they were imposed on the grounds of a national security exception.
The latest US action may escalate the trade dispute with some of America’s closest allies.
Mexico said it would defend its retaliatory measures, saying the imposition of US tariffs was “unjustified.”
“The purchases the United States makes of steel and aluminum from Mexico do not represent a threat to the [US] national security,” Mexico’s Economy Ministry said in a statement.
Lighthizer said last month that retaliation had no legal basis because the EU and other trading partners were making false assertions that the US steel and aluminum tariffs are illegal “safeguard” actions intended to protect US producers.
On March 8, US president Donald Trump said that he was moving to impose a 25-percent tariff on steel imports and a 10-percent tariff on aluminum imports, ending a two-month exemption and potentially setting the stage for a trade war with some of top US allies.
The Trump administration argues that the enormous flows of imports to the US were putting in jeopardy the American national security, making an odd departure from a decades-long US-led move towards open and free trade.
Washington has also imposed 25 percent duties on $50 billion of imports from China in the first in a possible series of increases that Trump says could affect up to $550 billion of Chinese goods.