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A February meeting revealed no fundamental changes of heart in Members’ positions on proposed changes to the WTO’s anti-dumping and subsidy disciplines.
The meeting of the Negotiating Group on Rules provided WTO Members their first chance to comment on the revised text proposed by chair Guillermo Valles Galmés in December. Bowing to the sharp divergence of views on his bold November 2007 draft, the chair dropped most of the changes he had proposed a year earlier, indicating instead how far apart Members remained on the key issues (Bridges Year 12 No.4 page 9).
Zeroing, Anti-circumvention Divide Membership
The practice of ‘zeroing’ in the calculation of anti-dumping duties was easily the most high-profile issue of the February meeting. The US, the only country to still use the method, had been gratified by the November 2007 draft’s admission of zeroing under certain circumstances, but - indicating lack of consensus - that provision was bracketed in the revised text.
Zeroing has been condemned repeatedly by the WTO’s Appellate Body and one of its members has suggested that it is time for the US to give up (see page 10). There seems little chance of that happening any time soon as the US has made the explicit acceptance of zeroing its primary goal in the rules negotiations. Equally adamant, the coalition of the so-called Friends of Anti-dumping Negotiations wants the practice to be explicitly prohibited. There was no narrowing of the gap at the negotiating group’s February meeting.
‘Anti-circumvention’ remains another sticking point. The US and the EU argue that stricter disciplines are needed to ensure that Members do not flout anti-dumping orders by shipping goods through other countries, but China, a frequent target of anti-dumping measures, called for anti-circumvention to be removed completely from the text.
Fisheries Subsidies
Old divisions were also evident in Members’ interventions on fisheries subsidies. The meeting was a first airing of views on the chair’s new approach to the negotiations rather than a discussion of any of the questions he had raised in the ‘roadmap’ he proposed to the membership in December (Bridges Year 12 No.6 page 10).
Japan reiterated its ‘basic position’ that over-capacity and over-fishing due to subsidies could be avoided by “controlling fisheries under effective management regimes.” The statement went on to say that some fisheries subsidies served environmental and social purposes, the importance of which for each Member “should be fully respected as long as the basic principles of the WTO are not being seriously undermined.”
Korea echoed Japan’s position and praised the chair’s decision to present Members with a ‘roadmap’ of fundamental questions rather than a revision of the controversial November 2007 legal text. Previous discussions had revealed a great divergence of a conceptual nature among delegations, the Korean representative said. Further discussions along the lines suggested in roadmap would be the most effective way of preparing a revised legal text that would “reflect the views of Members in a more balanced manner than its predecessor.”
New Zealand also welcomed the roadmap, but said the November 2007 text should remain the “point of reference for negotiations and the basis for future work.” Members should now focus on “seeking a common understanding on the identification and prohibition of subsidies that contribute to over-capacity and over-fishing [...] and avoid these discussions devolving into a protracted debate on fisheries management in which subsidies are incidental.” The delegate also said that countermeasures envisaged under the November text for violations of the future agreement - dropped in the December 2008 revision - merited further consideration. These included the suspension of access of fishing or service vessels to port facilities for landing, trans-shipping or processing fish.
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