WASHINGTON, March 29: A leading US business group on Friday urged the Bush administration to comply with a World Trade Organization ruling against hefty US steel tariffs imposed last year to help domestic steel producers.

It is vital to the international trading system that all WTO members comply with dispute settlement decisions — and the United States should demonstrate leadership by setting an example, Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, said.

The NFTC represents large US companies such as Boeing Caterpillar, General Electric, Honeywell, Procter & Gamble and IBM, which have a big stake in ensuring foreign markets are open to US goods.

Earlier this week, a WTO dispute settlement panel issued a preliminary, confidential decision that the tariffs imposed last year by President George W. Bush violated international trade rules. The panel’s final report is expected next month and US officials have said they would appeal if it is the same.

US steel companies and their supporters in Congress have criticized the WTO decision as another example of the trade body overstepping its bounds by imposing obligations on the United States that it never agreed to accept.

A decision in the appeals phase of the case is expected this fall. A second negative ruling would force Bush to choose whether to flout the WTO by continuing the steel tariffs until their scheduled termination in March 2005 or anger domestic steel companies and workers by removing them early.

With world trade talks at a sensitive stage, Failure to comply with current decisions is not a sound strategy. It will only make those negotiations more difficult, Reinsch said. We believe now is the time for US compliance, not defiance.—Reuters