The World Trade Organization (WTO) on Tuesday established dispute panels in two cases involving the United States, one in which the U.S. is the plaintiff against China and another in which it is defending an action brought by Europe.

On China, the WTO has established a panel to look at antidumping and antisubsidy duties that China has slapped on U.S. auto exports. China has emerged as a major market for American automobiles, and the Obama administration alleges that China is engaging in protectionism without legal justification.

The Chinese tariffs, which range as high as 8.9 percent, were announced shortly after President Obama slapped safeguard tariffs on Chinese tires. 

In Monday’s third presidential debate, Obama noted that the U.S. has brought more WTO cases against China than during the two terms of the Bush administration, and he highlighted the tire tariffs. The moves are popular in the swing state of Ohio. 

“We will not stand idly by while China misuses trade remedy procedures and puts American jobs at risk,” said U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk. “As we have demonstrated in numerous cases, we are serious about holding China accountable to its WTO commitments and ensuring that there is a level playing field for American workers and businesses.”

The U.S. initiated the WTO action in July and following mandatory talks in August, the WTO referred the matter to a dispute panel. The panel process can take as long as three to five years to work out.

In the European case, the WTO sent a European request to send $12 billion in annual trade sanctions against the United States to arbitration. The European Union claims that the U.S. has not abided by a ruling that found aircraft maker Boeing illegally benefited from subsidies in the form of military and space contracts and state aid. A separate compliance panel was set up to determine whether the U.S. has withdrawn the subsidies, as it has claimed.

Press secretary Jay Carney said no bilateral discussions have been planned but President Obama is prepared "to consider" engaging Tehran. 

"Bring it on," a spokeswoman said in response to a 56-page Kremlin report detailing social ills in America. 

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) unearthed old complaints that President Obama ignored the law on abortion and Jerusalem in a catalog of examples in which he says the president overstepped his constitutional authority.

Cantor released his report on “The Imperial Presidency” on Tuesday as a closing indictment of all that Republicans think is wrong with Obama's leadership. Among the 40 or so examples are two instances of foreign policies included under the heading “ignoring the plain letter of the law and failing to faithfully execute the law.”

In his report, Cantor accuses the State Department of funding a group that advocated for abortion rights overseas as part of the $18 million the administration spent to help Kenya reform its constitution in 2010, in violation of the Siljander Amendment. The Government Accountability Office in a report last year found that the U.S. Agency for International Development provided funding to a group that made recommendations about fetal rights and abortion to the entity charged with drafting the constitution and faulted the State Department for not having “clear guidance” for compliance with the law.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told New Hampshire voters Monday to ask President Obama why Marines weren’t protecting the U.S. Consulate in Libya when Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed last month.

“Where the hell were the Marines? In Libya, where were the Marines? There were no uniformed Marines guarding our ambassador? Where do you think the most dangerous embassy in the world is? It’s got to be Libya or Iraq,” Paul said at an event in New Hampshire on Monday.

In his new ad, Romney says foreign leaders looked at the president's Middle East tour and "saw weakness."


Your morning global affairs speed-read

The presidential candidates' third and final debate is over, and in the end it wasn't really about foreign policy and not much of a debate. President Obama and Mitt Romney repeated well-worn talking points — Romney said U.S. leadership in the world has waned over the past four years; Obama said America's reputation is on the rebound after the George W. Bush years — but both largely stayed away from any deep policy prescriptions.

There were a few surprises, starting with Romney's decision to stay well clear of criticizing the politically charged deaths of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya last month. And Romney promised to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in 2014, without the usual caveats.

One of the most heated exchanges came when Obama ripped into Romney for bringing up the president's so-called “apology tour” to the Middle East in 2009, a line that works well with conservatives but clashed with Romney's tack to the center during the debate.

Two powerful business groups want a federal court to modify or scrap what they call burdensome Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules that force companies to disclose whether they rely on minerals from war-stricken parts of Africa.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers have petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review the rules, which are required under the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

A divided SEC, in a 3-2 vote in August, approved rules aimed at cracking down on the use of “conflict minerals” from the militia-ravaged Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and surrounding areas.

The business groups’ short petition Friday does not spell out the basis for challenge. The two groups, in a statement, said the business community “understands the seriousness of the strife occurring in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

The one foreign policy topic that was expected to dominate Monday night's foreign policy debate barely got a mention: Libya.