The government said Thursday it will ask the World Trade Organization later this month to set up a settlement panel to resolve the dispute with Washington over Japan's steel exports, trade chief Takashi Fukaya said. The formal request will be made at the next meeting of the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body in Geneva on Feb. 24, Fukaya told a news conference. The issue in question concerns the export of Japanese hot-rolled steel, which has been subject to U.S. antidumping measures since last June, when the U.S. government moved to impose dumping duties of up to 67 percent. In accordance with Japan's filing in November of a complaint with the WTO over the issue, the two governments entered talks on Jan. 13 under the auspices of the international trade watchdog. But the talks fell apart. "During the bilateral consultations, both sides just ex pressed their assertions without reaching a settlement," Fukaya said. "The Japanese government decided to ask the DSB to set up a panel." Fukaya claimed the United States overestimated the degree of damage the Japanese imports caused to the U.S. market, miscalculated the dumping margins, and biased the U.S. steel industry against its Japanese counterpart. With the DSB likely to decide to set up the dispute settlement panel at its second meeting, scheduled for next month, Fukaya said he expects the panel to produce its final report around October. In a related move, Japan and the U.S. will hold their second working-level meeting on steel in Tokyo next month to seek a way for the two nations to settle the chain of dumping disputes, according to a senior trade official.
