The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), along with the Japanese government, has filed a trade complaint against the European Union, saying the E.U. has violated a World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement by taxing the import of some tech products. They allege that the E.U. is illegally imposing import duties on cable and satellite boxes that can access the Internet, flat-panel computer monitors, and some multifunction computer printers, the USTR announced Wednesday. Those products represented a $70 billion global export market in 2007, the USTR said in a news release.
"It is critical that the European Union live up to its [WTO] obligations instead of imposing new taxes and duties on innovative technologies," U.S.Trade Representative Susan Schwab said in a statement. "The EU should be working with the United States to promote new technologies, not finding protectionist gimmicks to apply new duties to these products." Representatives of the E.U. did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
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