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An arbitrator with the World Trade Organization issued a final determination against the European Union for illegal subsidies to Airbus, paving the way for the United States to impose retaliatory duties on $7.5 billion worth of exports.

The USTR moved rapidly, publishing their final list with an effective date of October 18th - later this week. This means that goods must be imported, entered and released before 12:01 AM ET on Friday. The list that the USTR compiled covers a range of products by country and are 10% for aircraft and 25% for all other products.

On October 14th, the way was officially cleared when the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) authorized the US to impose the countermeasures on European goods.

Importers will need to deposit the additional duties required at time of entry and should begin to evaluate whether or not they will require increases to their continuous bond amounts.

US exporters should also be wary and pay attention to a similar case working through the WTO which the EU has filed against the US for illegal subsidies to Boeing. It stands to reason that if the WTO finds in favor of the EU that they will take similar action and select tariff numbers to retaliate to inflict the most amount of trade pain.

For more information, the USTR posted this news release on their site and clicking the button below goes immediately to the Federal Register where the full details, affected HTS numbers and countries are published.