Amid the ongoing trade war between the United States and China, the World Trade Organization on Friday looked into Beijing's request to impose more than 7-billion U.S. dollars of annual sanctions on Washington over anti-dumping practices.
A source close to the organization said that the arbitration was automatically triggered after the U.S. told the WTO that it objected to the level of retaliation proposed by China.
Beijing filed its dispute back in 2013, unhappy with how Washington assessed whether exports had been dumped in the U.S. market at unfairly low prices.
The WTO ruled in favor of China in 2016, but Washington missed the deadline of this August to bring its practices in line with the 2016 ruling.
The arbitration process normally takes a long time, and the results are not expected to be known for months.