Japan is poised to retract its plan to retaliate against steel import restrictions the United States invoked earlier this year, due to satisfaction with Washington's moves to exempt certain items, a top Japanese trade official said Monday.
"Taking into account the developments so far and their substances, the current U.S. measures can be valued overall," Seiji Murata, vice minister of economy, trade and industry, told a news conference.
The remarks followed a U.S. decision on Thursday to waive tariffs on an additional 178 steel products in finalizing the list of items to be exempted from the safeguard tariffs, including 23 Japanese products amounting to 53,000 tons on an annual import basis.
This brought the total amount of Japanese products receiving exclusions to 553,000 tons, equivalent to nearly 40 percent of the steel imports from Japan that were subject to the three-year tariffs of up to 30 percent.
Japan will make a final decision on the planned retraction after the U.S. administration formalizes the final exclusion list in an official bulletin, Murata said.
But Tokyo will continue to challenge the legitimacy of the U.S. measures under the jurisdiction of the World Trade Organization, Murata said. Washington imposed the tariffs in March to give breathing space to the beleaguered U.S. steel industry.
"Regarding products that were not covered, we will proceed with discussions with a matter-of-fact attitude in line with international rules," the vice minister said.