EU wins latest WTO round with US

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has recently ruled in the European Union’s favour in the latest round of the Airbus-Boeing dispute, the UK’s Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board (AHDB) reports. This allows the bloc to impose up to $3.99 billion (€3.31bn) of tariffs on US goods, although the impact of these on the dairy sector will be limited, it says.

This is the latest development within the Airbus-Boeing dispute between the EU and the US. Last year, the WTO ruled in favour of the US, enabling the nation to impose tariffs of up to $7.5 billion (€6.2bn) on EU products. The list of affected US goods includes tariffs on civilian aircrafts along with a range of food, agricultural and industrial goods. Four dairy codes will now be subject to a new 25% tariff, including three cheese codes and milk protein concentrate. The tariffs were applied from 10 November, although they will not apply to goods that were already in transit.

The EU is a net exporter of dairy products to the US, and historically imports little in the way of dairy products in the past, with the US accounting for only 3% of all EU dairy imports in the years 2017-2019, the US only accounted for 3% of all EU dairy imports. As such, the impact of the tariffs being applied is likely to be somewhat limited, analyst Felicity Rusk says in the report.