The European Union yesterday gave three months? notice to the United States to avoid retaliatory sanctions after Brussels won a long-running trade dispute.

The World Trade Organization's (WTO) highest court threw out a US appeal against an earlier ruling that Washington had violated global trade rules in the export tax row.
This has now opened the door for the EU to impose duties on US exports that could amount to billions of euros. The EU successfully argued that the US did not fully comply with a series of WTO rulings against the tax measures which are said to have benefited companies such as Boeing and Microsoft.