President Donald Trump’s tariffs against more than $200 billion in Chinese goods are illegal, the World Trade Organization (WTO) said Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.
The Trump administration has justified the tariffs based on China’s ongoing theft of American intellectual property, which reportedly costs the U.S. economy up to $600 billion each year. The WTO sided with China against the U.S., arguing it was illegal for the Trump administration to only target products from China, and saying Trump hasn’t sufficiently proven the tariffed products benefit from China’s theft, the Associated Press reported.
The Trump administration has consistently ramped up tariffs against China since 2018, currently imposing 25 percent tariffs on roughly $234 billion of Chinese goods. The WTO ruling would allow China to impose retaliatory tariffs. While the U.S. can appeal Tuesday’s ruling, the WTO body responsible for handling appeals is currently out of commission as the U.S. has refused to approve any new members, according to the AP. (RELATED: Josh Hawley Introduces A Bill Cracking Down On Big Tech Exports To China)
A photo illustration shows a label inside an item of clothing reading “Made in China” in New York on May 09, 2019. – US and Chinese officials resumed crucial trade talks on thursday, trying to resolve a year-long dispute that was on the verge of escalating with new US tariffs. With US punitive tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods set to jump to 25 percent just after midnight, President Donald Trump said earlier on May 9, 2019 that an agreement remains “possible.” (JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images)
The ruling comes more than a week after the U.S. took additional action to block cotton and tomato imports from the China’s Xinjiang region, where the communist regime is currently engaging in forced sterilization, abortion and reeducation of Muslim Uighur’s. The persecution has been described as “genocide,” with many Uighur’s being placed in forced labor camps to produce products the U.S. seeks to ban.
Trump has had an increasingly antagonistic relationship with China since the coronavirus spread out of nation’s borders in 2019. Trump has insisted several times on referring to the disease as the “China virus” or “China plague,” vowing to hold China accountable for allegedly misleading the world regarding the severity of the disease. (RELATED: WHO Official Says She Suspected Human-To-Human COVID-19 Transmission ‘Right From The Start’ — But The WHO Echoed Misleading Chinese Claims To The Contrary For Weeks)
Several nations have concluded that China falsified its data on cases and deaths in Wuhan and the rest of the country, including the U.S., Australia, and Germany. Trump has also emphasized China’s decision to ban travel out of Wuhan to the rest of China but allowing travel out of Wuhan to the rest of the world in the early days of the pandemic.