Barriers to trade - Case Study Example

of September 2009, the Chinese government filed an economic complaint with the WTO as a response to the announcement by the US that an ongoing plan of increasing the tariffs on the tires produced from China was about to be implemented (Bown, 2002). Consequently, on September 2010, the US Congress Committee made an approval of the bill that was to impose tariffs on China. Nonetheless, the trade relations between the Chinese government and the US government is significant to the two countries since China is reported to be the second largest trading partner of the US globally (Bown, 2002).

Further, recently there have been legal battles between China and the United States. On May 23, 2014, the WTO dispute settlement panel ruled that the duties of up to 21.5 percent that were imposed by China on some of the U.S. imported vehicles were inconsistent with the WTO obligations of China. Moreover, on March 23, 2014 the WTO made a ruling that China’s restrictions on the rare earth elements as well as the two other metals were extremely inconsistent with its WTO obligations. However, the decision was later appealed on April 8.

Indeed, the trade relationship between China and the USA has been strained recently and more negotiation and talks are being done to ease the tensions. On July 9 to 10 of the year 2014, the Chinese and U.S. officials held talks under the S&ED (Walker, 2014). The WTO is simply a negotiating forum which has the overall mission of promoting free trade all over the world through multilateral negotiations among the member states that is currently reported to be composed of approximately 153 members (Bown, 2002, p 54).

The member states are expected to ensure that their various trade laws conform to the terms of the 16 different agreements that comprise the rules of the WTO. In case one of the member countries is of the opinion that the other country’s laws are a violation of the WTO rules, the complaining country is expected to file a complaint in the