Recent House Action -
Lost amidst the debate over Trade Promotion Authority, Trade Adjustment Assistance, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the House recently voted 300-131 to pass H.R. 2393, the Country of Origin Labeling Amendments Act of 2015, which repeals country-of-origin labels (COOL) meant to allow consumers to know where animals in beef, poultry and pork products were born, raised and slaughtered. Originally enacted in 2002, the labeling requirements have been under attack since 2008. The House vote followed the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s latest ruling against U.S. efforts to salvage its labeling regime. Without subsequent action by the United States to remedy the trade violations inherent in the labeling requirements, the WTO ruling allows Canada and Mexico—the United States’ two largest export markets—to apply retaliatory measures amounting up to around 2.6 billion dollars in tariffs annually on U.S. exports to those countries. Enactment of H.R. 2393 would bring the U.S. into WTO compliance.
WTO Issues -
Canada and Mexico had challenged U.S. COOL requirements at the WTO in 2009 claiming that the requirements violated U.S. obligations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT 1994), the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement), the Agreement of Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) and the Agreement on Rules of Origin. A dispute settlement panel found that the COOL measure violates Article 2.1 of the TBT Agreement by according less favorable treatment to imported Canadian and Mexican cattle and hogs than to like domestic cattle and hogs. The WTO Appellate Body upheld this finding, albeit for different reasons, in June 2012.
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