The World Trade Organization (WTO) is today creating a panel to determine whether the US has complied with its previous ruling against the tariffs that that country imposes on Spanish black olives, which reopens a dispute between Brussels and Washington that began in 2019 and that seemed closed two years ago.
Despite the fact that the WTO granted Spain a favor in the dispute, in a November 2021 decision stating that US tariffs were not compatible with international regulations, the case has been reopened at the request of the EU, which considers that the US is not complying with the ruling.
In January 2023, the US International Trade Administration reduced but only partially those tariffs, which for practical purposes remained from the previous 35% to 31%, something that the EU considers insufficient, noting that the US “continues to apply illegitimate tariffs” that they can expel Spanish olive exporters from that market.
In search of a “friendly solution”
The new panel was requested by the EU to the WTO on July 14, after bilateral negotiations between Brussels and Washington in May, also within the international organization based in Geneva, did not achieve progress in the dispute.
Sources close to the WTO indicated this Friday that the European Union delegation to the organization regretted having to carry out the dispute within the institution again after a clear ruling in its favor, but defended the need to do so before the lack of commitment from the US side.
For its part, the US defended that it is already complying with the 2021 sentence, but accepted the new creation of the panel and expressed its willingness to continue working with the EU to resolve this issue in the most positive way possible. Since January 12, the compensatory duties imposed by the US on the importation of Spanish black olives have fallen from 14.97% to 11.08%, but if others are added to these for antidumping of almost 20%, they leave these impositions in almost 31%, compared to 35% applied since 2018.
Black olives are used in the United States mainly for making pizzas, and Spanish exports of the product to that economy amounted to around 70 million euros per year, according to 2017 figures. From the beginning of the dispute, the EU has attached great importance to this commercial conflict, since it fears that a decision of the WTO favorable to the US would be used by this country to challenge the entire policy of agricultural subsidies in Europe that is under the umbrella of the CAP.
The European Commission said in the middle of this month, when announcing the request for the panel finally created today, that it remained “open to a friendly solution” with the US, but also threatened to carry out countermeasures if Washington failed to comply with the WTO decisions.
