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The
appeal pushes the case into legal limbo along with some 18
others, several of them involving the United States, because the
WTO lacks a functioning appellate body.
The U.S. decision on whether to comply with the recommendation
on the South Korea duties or lodge an appeal had been seen as an
early indicator of U.S. President Joe Biden's approach to the
WTO and its dispute settlement system.
Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. administration blocked
appointments to the appeals body, leaving it with too few
adjudicators to rule.
The U.S. mission in Geneva did not immediately comment on the
appeal.
A WTO panel recommended in January that the duties on South
Korea - imposed on four grades of steel in 2016 and on large
power transformers in 2012 - be revised.
The three-person WTO panel found that the U.S. Department of
Commerce failed to take into account all the information
available when it calculated the level of dumping or subsidies.
The tariffs on transformer makers Hyosung Heavy Industries Corp
and Hyundai Electric & Energy Systems Co and steelmakers from
Hyundai Steel and POSCO were inconsistent with WTO rules, the
panel said.
The case was later joined by the European Union, which said
steel producers from several EU member states had also suffered
from Commerce Department practices.
South Korea however failed to convince the panel that U.S.
authorities had an "unwritten measure" of using the most adverse
facts available in order to maximise duties, where an exporter
had failed fully to cooperate.
(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop and Emma Farge; Editing by Nick
Tattersall)
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