Bridges Weekly Trade News Digest • Volume 13 • Number 17 • 13th May 2009
Anti-Dumping Activity on the Increase, WTO Says
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The number of times that WTO Members launched new investigations into unfairly priced, or ‘dumped’, imports jumped 17 percent in the second half of last year, the WTO reported last week, while the number of new anti-dumping tariffs that Member governments applied increased by 45 percent.
‘Dumping,’ in trade parlance, refers to the practice of exporting goods at below the price that they command in their home market. The WTO Agreement on Anti-Dumping allows Member governments to place retaliatory tariffs on dumped goods, so long as they can prove that dumping is indeed taking place and that it is injuring the competing domestic industry. Governments also have to be able to calculate the ‘dumping margin’, the gap between the home market price and the export one.
An increase in such activity could signal a turn to protectionism amid dismal economic times, but it could also indicate that Members are putting ever greater faith in the WTO’s mechanisms for resolving trade disputes.
Fifteen Members reported initiating a total of 120 new investigations in the second half of 2008, compared with the 103 investigations that were launched by 14 Members during the corresponding period in 2007. Overall, last year saw a total 208 new anti-dumping investigations, up from 163 in 2007 but down from the high of 366 that was reached in 2001.
Anti-dumping activity showed a general downward trend from the 2001 peak until the first half of 2008, when the number of new cases launched went up by 39 percent as compared with the previous year (see Bridges Weekly, 23 October 2008, http://ictsd.net/i/news/bridgesweekly/31647/).
India led the way with 42 new investigations in the second half of last year, followed by Brazil, which launched 16 inquiries. China and Turkey followed with 11 and 10, respectively, while the EU launched nine new cases to the US’ three.
China was by far the biggest target: 34 of the new investigations were launched against its exports. The EU followed with 14; Taiwan, Thailand and the US came next with 6 new cases each.
Products in the base metals sector were the targets of 43 investigations, the most of any sector. The chemicals sector came next with 22 new cases, followed by textiles (19 initiations), and plastic and rubber (14 initiations).
The number of new anti-dumping measures that Member governments applied also rose in the second half of last year, the WTO said. Eighty-one new final anti-dumping measures were put in place between July and December of 2008, a 45 percent jump from the 56 new measures for the corresponding period of 2007.
The US led the pack on this front, with a total of 21 new measures applied, up from just two in the last six months of 2007. India was next with 13, followed by Turkey (11), Brazil (8), and the EU (6).
The information on anti-dumping was taken from semi-annual reports that Member countries have made to the WTO’s Committee on Anti-Dumping Practices, the secretariat said, and thus the data are only as complete as Members’ reporting practices are thorough.
ICTSD reporting.
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Could you please highlight something for calculation of anti-dumping margin and on-going negotiations
t is not surprising that antidumping investigations have increased in a time of economic turmoil. What is notable is the increased use of the measures by developing countries together with their increased need for technical assistance. Ideally they would be able to conduct WTO compliant investigations with minimal disruption, while achieving transparency sufficient for exporters to present a meaningful defense