Reuters: Regulatory News: UPDATE 3-China won't challenge WTO ruling in U.S. bank card row

Reuters: Regulatory News Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

UPDATE 3-China won't challenge WTO ruling in U.S. bank card row Aug 31st 2012, 22:17 Fri Aug 31, 2012 9:39am EDT GENEVA Aug 31 (Reuters) - China has decided not to appeal against a World Trade Organisation ruling that found it had discriminated against U.S. bank card suppliers such as Mastercard Inc and Visa Inc in favour of a state-owned enterprise, China UnionPay. China needed to declare its intention to appeal before a meeting of the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body on Friday formally adopted a ruling published last month, which handed the United States an election-year trade policy victory against China. A U.S. official at the meeting said the United States was "extremely pleased" that the ruling would not be appealed, according to a transcript of the diplomat's remarks. "The policies of China, as reflected in the measures at issue in this dispute, have caused pervasive discrimination at every stage of a card-based payment transaction and severely distorted competition in China's market," the unnamed official said. The Chinese market for electronic payment services was worth well over $1 trillion per year, the official said. However, although the ruling found that China UnionPay (CUP) had a monopoly on yuan payment cards issued and used in China, it rejected the U.S. claim that CUP was an "across-the-board monopoly supplier" for all transactions denominated in yuan. The U.S. diplomat said the United States was disappointed that the ruling had stopped short of branding CUP as a "monopoly or exclusive supplier". China's representative at the meeting said that claim had been the centrepiece of the U.S. case, and China commended the dispute panel for rejecting it. However, despite China's decision not to appeal, the Chinese official said that the ruling was not entirely free from error, and China was "troubled" by parts of the ruling. Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions