GENEVA, Sept 15: China has appealed against a ruling by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) that its import regime for car parts is illegal, its first defeat in a dispute at the international trade body, the WTO said on Monday.

The WTO said in a statement that a meeting of its dispute settlement body scheduled for Monday which was due to adopt the ruling had been cancelled because the reports had been appealed.

The WTO’s Appellate Body now has up to three months to review the case.

A WTO dispute panel, ruling in three challenges brought by the United States, Canada and the European Union, found in July that China’s import tariffs broke international trade rules.

The case was the first trade dispute lost by China since it joined the WTO in 2001, although it faces several other challenges ranging from intellectual property rules to financial information.

Beijing’s WTO accession commitments require it to set a lower tariff on imported car parts than on finished vehicles.

But China had applied the same tariff on parts as it does on vehicles unless the parts met local-content requirements.

China has a maximum tariff of 25 per cent for cars, but only 10 per cent on parts.—Reuters