Unfair Play: Examining the U.S. Anti-Dumping ‘War’ Against China
By Francis Tanczos
Affiliation not provided to SSRN
Washington Undergraduate Law Review, Vol. II, No. 3, pp. 77-93, Spring 2008
The accession of China to the World Trade Organization has marked an apparent increase in tensions concerning trade relations between China and the United States. This dynamic is particularly noteworthy considering that the US is China’s largest export market and, currently, the US’ trade deficit with China is larger than ever. As one of the largest exporters of low-cost labor-intensive goods, China presents somewhat of a predicament to the US in terms of its potential for causing material injury to US domestic markets. As a response, the US has appealed to trade remedy measures such as the imposition of anti-dumping duties, which are designed to offset ‘unfair’ trade practices. Currently, China has the largest number of anti-dumping investigations initiated against it of any of the US’ trading partners. Yet, the methodology that the US uses for determining dumping margins for ‘non-market economies’ like China differs from market economies and is significantly unfavorable towards Chinese firms. This paper examines how the US has been responding to some Chinese imports utilizing trade defense/remedy measures by looking at US anti-dumping procedure and anti-dumping case law. It also considers the forces of US domestic industries and constituents in the process, looks at questionable practices by the US and addresses the future of US anti-dumping measures towards China.
By looking at US anti-dumping procedure and case law, it becomes fairly clear that anti-dumping measures place a significant burden on US-China trade relations. Through the examination of these three major cases in the past decade concerning food imports from China, it should be noted that, to date, all three of these anti-dumping measures are still in place. Granted that some Chinese firms were able to reduce their anti-dumping rates to zero, there are still a total of six products from China to which anti-dumping duties still apply: fresh garlic (1994), crawfish tail meat (1997), preserved mushrooms (1998), non-frozen apple juice concentrate (1999), honey (2000), and frozen or canned warm water shrimp and prawns (2004).Yet, the NFCAJ case shows that such measures by the United States are not entirely foolproof. The more that China challenges anti-dumping measures the more likely they will win more cases. Moreover, the more committed that China is in coming together as single industries, the more able it will be to challenge the powers of US industries.