South Korea has asked the World Trade Organization for authorisation to impose annual trade sanctions on the United States worth at least 711 million US Dollars.

The move follows a dispute over exports of washing machines. Seoul asked for permission to impose an open-ended amount of trade sanctions if Washington broke the same rules again regarding other products. This past week, the WTO also published a broad Canadian complaint about US trade. Vietnam complained about US tariffs as well. And India re-opened a trade dispute with the US, after Washington failed to comply with a ruling on solar power.