The US has stepped up its campaign against China’s trade policies, asking for two cases against Beijing to be referred for arbitration at the World Trade Organisation.
Washington alleges that China is breaking WTO rules in restricting foreign credit card companies’ access to its payments system and imposing illegal emergency import subsidies against US steel.
The US started the cases at the WTO last September, and on Friday said that attempts to resolve the dispute through negotiation with China had failed. The next stage of the process is for the WTO to convene a judicial panel, with a ruling likely to take in between one and two years.