On Dec 9, a three-judge panel at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) issued a landmark ruling in one of the highest-profile cases which the watchdog of world trade has ever adjudicated. It found that tariffs on steel and aluminium that the United States levied in 2018 against the plaintiffs China, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey, and which the Biden administration has kept in place, violated WTO rules. It added that the US justification for imposing the tariffs – on national security grounds – was “not justified”. It also supported the plaintiffs’ position that the tariffs were discriminatory in that they did not apply to most other trade partners of the US. The panel urged the US to bring its measures into conformity with WTO rules.

China and the other plaintiffs welcomed the ruling, which a Chinese government spokesman accurately described as “objective and fair”. But the US reacted defiantly, declaring that it “strongly rejected the flawed interpretation and conclusions” of the panel, and reiterated its long-held view that “issues of national security cannot be reviewed in WTO dispute settlement”.