China – Countervailing and Anti-dumping Duties on Grain Oriented Flat-rolled Electrical Steel from the United States: exporting US AD/CVD methodologies through WTO dispute settlement?

Abstract

In July 2009, Chinese steel producers of grain oriented electrical steel filed anti-dumping (AD) and countervailing duty (CVD) cases against US and Russian producers. The US challenged the duties for a variety a reasons, many of which involved deficiencies in the producers' application to China's investigating authority, the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China (MOFCOM). The US also challenged certain aspects of MOFCOM's injury analysis. The Panel and Appellate Body ruled in favor of the US on virtually every issue. Given the deficiencies in the application and China's handling of the case, the Panel and AB decisions were justified. In a larger sense, however, we believe China may well emerge as the 'winner' in this dispute as this case establishes important standards for allegations and evidence in applications, standards that other countries (including the US) likely have failed to meet when they have imposed AD and CVD orders on the largest target country, China. * 7 Article 11.2 of the SCM Agreement provides: 'An application under paragraph 1 shall include sufficient evidence of the existence of (a) a subsidy and, if possible, its amount, (b) injury within the meaning of Article VI of GATT 1994 as interpreted by this Agreement, and (c) a causal link between the subsidized imports and the alleged injury. Simple assertion, unsubstantiated by relevant evidence, cannot be considered sufficient to meet the requirements of this paragraph.'

China–HP-SSST: Last Part of Growing Pains?

“…Interestingly, the discussion above is reminiscent of the analysis done by Prusa and Vermulst (2014) in the China-GOES case. When reflecting on the shortcomings of MOFCOM's price effects' analysis, they also concluded that 'one wonders how much analysis was actually involved in [China's] price effects "analysis"'.…”

“… 3 Interested readers are referred to the previous articles that have discussed these final rulings: see Prusa and Vermulst (2014, 2015), Moore and Wu (2015), and Mitchell and Prusa (2016). …”

China–Cellulose Pulp: China's Quest to Satisfy WTO Panels and the Appellate Body

“…Moreover, in China–Autos , as well as in China−GOES , MOFCOM relied on average unit values without effecting adjustments to ensure price comparability between subject imports and the domestic like product when considering price effects (Prusa and Vermulst, 2014: 246, 249; Mitchell and Prusa, 2016: 315) 76 . MOFCOM further mixed annual price data with some quarterly data, which makes inference essentially impossible (Mitchell and Prusa, 2016: 319−322).…”

China–Autos:Haven't We Danced this Dance Before?

“…In 2011–2012, in China–GOES , the US challenged China's imposition of AD and CVD measures imposed by China on grain-oriented flat-rolled electrical steel from the US (Prusa and Vermulst, 2014). 25 That decision covered several issues common to China–Autos (US) as discussed further below, including transparency in the investigation.…”

“…Many of the US claims were similar to those raised by the US in several previous WTO disputes brought by the US against China: China–GOES, 3 and China–X-Ray Equipment, 4 and in China–Broiler Products 5 . As a result, to the extent that the issues have already been analyzed in previous ALI reports (Prusa and Vermulst, 2014, 2015; Moore and Wu, 2015), we will not analyze them in this report again, although we elaborate on the overlap in issues in Section 3. We review some of the procedural shortcomings of the MOFCOM investigation in Section 4 and discuss substantive issues related to MOFCOM's determination of injury in Section 5.…”