Japan yesterday became the latest major US trading partner to impose sanctions to protest a US anti-dumping law, taking the unprecedented step of levying punitive tariffs on 15 US goods including steel.
The tariffs, set at 15 percent from Sept. 1, are in line with similar moves by Canada and the EU against the so-called Byrd Amendment.
The law enacted in 2000 redistributes US levies on dumping -- the selling of items abroad at lower prices than in the domestic market -- to the US companies that complained. Critics says this puts exporters to the US at a disadvantage.
Trade Minister Shoichi Nakagawa said Japan had "been urging the United States repeatedly to abolish this amendment to avoid the countermeasures but we see an extremely low possibility that it will be abolished in the [US] current fiscal year" which ends in September 2005.
"We hope strongly that the United States will take this decision by Japan seriously and scrap the Byrd Amendment immediately," Nakagawa said in a statement.
It is the first known time that Japan, whose economy is built on exports, has imposed retaliatory sanctions on a country.
The goods subject to punitive tariffs include steel products, machinery parts, printing machines, forklift trucks and industrial belts.
With the retaliatory measures, Japan's imports from the US could fall by up to US$52.1 million a year, the ceiling approved by the WTO, the ministry said.
The government decided to act against the law, named for US Senator Robert Byrd, after approval by its Council on Customs, Tariff, Foreign Exchange and Other Transactions.
Japan and other six other countries -- Brazil, Canada, Chile, India, Mexico and South Korea -- as well as the EU took the issue to the WTO, which last year authorized sanctions amounting to 72 percent of the sums reaped by the US law.
Japan is one of the closest political allies of the US, but the two countries have a number of trade disputes.
Japan banned US beef imports in December 2003 after a case of mad cow disease was discovered in Washington state. Japan, the biggest importer of US beef before the ban, is under intense US pressure to resume the imports but has insisted it will wait until its scientists complete a review.
Japanese automakers have also been politically sensitive given the inroads they have made in the US, where General Motors and Ford are struggling badly.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a steadfast friend of US President George W. Bush, last week downplayed the impact Japanese sanctions would have on relations between the countries.
The tariffs are "an issue we are always discussing with the WTO," Koizumi said. "We don't have to call every individual issue into question."
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