| Mexico this week stuck to its guns and formally appealed a World Trade
Organisation (WTO) ruling that duties it has imposed on U.S. corn syrup
imports are illegal, a Mexican trade official said on Friday. The WTO on
June 22 ruled that three-year-old anti-dumping duties on high fructose
corn syrup (HFCS) from the United States were illegal and violated
international trade law
A panel of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, of which
Mexico, the United States and Canada are signatories, drew the same
conclusion in an Aug. 3 ruling.
"Now we are going to wait for the (WTO) panel to review this
challenge and a result where we can win or tone down the result of the
panel's final report because it is totally bad for us," the trade
official said on condition of anonymity.
He said the appeal was presented on Tuesday.
Mexico began imposing anti-dumping duties on U.S. HFCS in January 1998.
The U.S. industry filed a NAFTA complaint the following year.
The Mexican duties followed claims by sugar growers that a surge in
U.S. imports of corn syrup, an alternative sweetener to sugar, beginning
in 1996, was cutting into their share of Mexico's soft-drinks industry.
HFCS competes with the Mexican sugar sectro as a cheaper and more
efficient sweetener for the nation's mammoth soft drinks industry.
The government official said the WTO panel has six months to decide on
Mexico's appeal from the date it was presented. |