US hits back after China condemns Trump’s ‘tariff shocks’ at WTO

Geneva — China condemned tariffs launched or threatened by US President Donald Trump at a World Trade Organisation meeting on Tuesday, saying such “tariff shocks” could upend the global trading system in a warning dismissed as hypocritical by Washington.

Trump has announced sweeping 10% tariffs on all Chinese imports, prompting Beijing to respond with retaliatory tariffs and to file a WTO dispute against Washington in what could be an early test of Trump’s stance towards the institution.

“These ‘tariff shocks’ heighten economic uncertainty, disrupt global trade and risk domestic inflation, market distortion or even global recession,” China’s ambassador to the WTO Li Chenggang said at a closed-door meeting of the global trade body, according to a statement sent to Reuters.

“Worse, the US unilateralism threatens to upend the rules-based multilateral trading system.”

US envoy David Bisbee took the floor in response, calling China’s economy a “predatory non-market economic system”.

“It is now more than two decades since China joined the WTO and it is clear that China has not lived up to the bargain that it struck with WTO members when it acceded,” he said. “During this period, China has produced a long record of violating, disregarding and evading WTO rules,” he added.

Only a handful of other states joined the debate, according to two trade sources who attended the meeting. Some of them expressed deep concern that tariffs pose a risk to the stability of the global trading system while others criticised China for alleged market distortions, the sources said.

WTO director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala also addressed the room and reiterated a call for calm. “The WTO was created precisely to manage times like these — to provide a space for dialogue, prevent conflicts from spiralling and support an open, predictable trading environment,” she said.

The WTO discussion, which began late on Tuesday and continues Wednesday, is the first time that mounting trade frictions were formally addressed on the agenda of the watchdog’s top decision-making body, the general council.

Less than being a swipe at Washington, some delegates said they considered China’s intervention more as an effort to show itself as supporting WTO rules — a posture that can help China win allies in ongoing global trade negotiations.

Disputes between the two top economies at the WTO long predate Trump’s arrival. Beijing has accused Washington of breaking rules while Washington says Beijing does not deserve its “developing country” status which entitles it to special treatment under WTO rules.

As the Trump administration has announced plans to withdraw or disengage from other global organisations, the WTO has not yet been a major focus for the White House.

However, incoming US trade representative Jamieson Greer has called the WTO “deeply flawed.”

Reuters