The United States did not fully comply with a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling and could face Chinese sanctions if it does not remove certain tariffs that break WTO rules, the organization's appeals judges said in a ruling on Tuesday.

The WTO report found that 11 U.S. countervailing measures violated WTO rules, and asked the U.S. to rectify the irregularities.

China went to the WTO in 2012 to challenge U.S. anti-subsidy tariffs on Chinese exports including solar panels, wind towers, steel cylinders and aluminum extrusions, exports that it valued at 7.3 billion U.S. dollars at the time.

MOFCOM backs WTO's report

China's Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said the WTO appellate report proves the U.S. "repeatedly abused trade remedy measures, which seriously damaged the fairness and impartiality of the international trade environment," according to a statement posted on MOFCOM's official website late Tuesday.

"China urges the U.S. to take concrete measures immediately to correct its wrongdoings in its anti-subsidy measures to China, and to create a fair international trade environment for companies from both countries," according to the statement.

MOFCOM's statement underlined that China "has always respected the multilateral trade rules, and is against any abusing trade remedy measures."

In recent years, the U.S. measures have severely hindered the normal export of Chinese products to the U.S., with the WTO ruling the tariffs as going against multilateral trade rules several times.

The WTO's ruling said the U.S. must accept Chinese prices to measure subsidies, even though the office of U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer thinks China used state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to subsidize and distort its economy.

New disagreements expected to appear

Under President Donald Trump, the United States has been blocking the process to appoint or reappoint members of the WTO's Appellate Body, which is effectively the top court for world trade.

The Appellate Body normally has seven members and needs three to consider each case, but from December 11 it will have only one judge left, causing at least a temporary collapse, the European Union's trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom said earlier on Tuesday.

The USTR statement said the outcome of its appeal illustrated the concerns it had about the Appellate Body, which it has accused of breaking procedural rules and overstepping its authority.

If China seeks to bring sanctions in the dispute, it would need to enter a new round of legal argument over the value of any damage to its trade.

The dispute centered on 17 investigations carried out by the U.S. Department of Commerce between 2007 and 2012.

The products concerned were solar panels, wind towers, thermal and coated paper, tow-behind lawn groomers, kitchen shelving, steel sinks, citric acid, magnesia carbon bricks, pressure pipe, line pipe, seamless pipe, steel cylinders, drill pipe, oil country tubular goods, wire strand and aluminum extrusions.

Shortly after the WTO ruling was released, U.S. President Donald Trump questioned China's failure to make good what he saw as its promise to buy more U.S. agricultural goods, and said Washington could impose tariffs on an additional 325 billion U.S. dollars worth of Chinese goods if it needed to do so.

(With inputs from Reuters)