A lawyer for Antigua and Barbuda, calling the World Trade Organisation (WTO) award 'absurd', says the twin-island state would have to set its sights lower on the level of opportunity within that market.
Antigua won compensation of US$21 million per year from the United States in a long-running trade dispute about gambling, but the amount was far lower than the US$3.44 billion of 'cross-retaliation' it had been seeking as compensation for being shut out of the U.S. online gambling market.
It's expected that the twin-island state would claim compensation by withholding intellectual property and related fees.
Compensation award
Mark Mendel, the lawyer who led the case for Antigua, said they were expecting a compensation award closer to US$1 billion from the WTO's disputes body.
"Antigua doesn't want to negate American intellectual property rights," he said " They don't want to sell ... DVDs and copies of Microsoft Office."
Washington had argued Antigua was entitled to only US$500,000 in compensation.
"The United States is pleased that the figure arrived at by the arbitrator is over 100 times lower than Antigua's claim," said Sean Spicer, a spokesman for U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab.
Antigua won a key victory in 2005, when the WTO ruled that a U.S. law allowing only domestic companies to provide online horse-race gambling services discriminated against foreign companies.
The former British colony had hoped to use that ruling to pry open the broader U.S. Internet gambling market, which Congress took steps to further restrict last year.
Washington, instead of bringing its laws in line with WTO rules, announced in May this year it would withdraw gambling from the services it opened up under a 1994 world trade deal.
Under WTO rules, it then had to offer comparable access in other sectors to interested countries.
Earlier this week, the European Union announced it had reached agreement with Washington over access to the U.S. postal and courier, research and development and storage and warehouse sectors in compensation.
- Reuters
