Circumventing international trading agreements

Using legislation dated 1984, designated "US Foreign Sales Corporations (FSC), the USA has since 2000 defied a WTO ruling that that the FSC constitutes an illegal trading subsidy. In March 2004, the EU implemented countermeasures on a list of US products, raising customs duty of 5%, followed by automatic, monthly increases by 1% up to a ceiling of 17% to be reached on 1 March 2005, if compliance does not happened in-between.