South Korea Suspends Tariff Concessions on Certain US Imports

The World Trade Organization said Friday that South Korea is to suspend tariff concessions on certain goods from the United States due to tariffs imposed by Washington on solar cells and washing machines responsible for around $1.4 billion in annual trade, Xinhua reported. “The Republic of Korea notifies the Council for Trade in Goods that it has decided to suspend substantially equivalent concessions and other obligations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 to the trade of the United States,” a WTO notice said. The measures are in response to US safeguard measures against imported solar cells and residential washers, according to WTO official documents filed in Geneva by South Korea, notifying that its measures apply to “equivalent concessions” which are not yet named. The US administration decided in January to impose tariffs of up to 50% on imported washers for the next three years, and up to 30% on solar cells and modules for the next four years. In its documents, South Korea said the US measures affect almost $304 million in washing machine products on which Washington collected $152 million in duties and $1.1 billion of solar panel imports which accrued duties to the Americans of $330 million in 2017.