EU introduces new AD rules against China
Mia reported that new EU anti-dumping rules came into effect on December 20th 2017, aimed at protecting the bloc's manufacturers against unfairly cheap imports from countries such as China. China is the EU's largest supplier of goods, but the bloc believes that some of its exports illegally undercut European prices. To counter this, Brussels has imposed anti-dumping duties on various Chinese products, notably in the steel sector. But a year ago, World Trade Organization rules for calculating fair Chinese export prices expired, making it harder to identify cases of dumping. The issue prompted EU member states to overcome years of wrangling and agree earlier this month to a new method of calculating fair import prices.
From now on, if the European Commission detects "significant market distortion" between the sale price of an imported product and its production cost, it can determine what the fair price should be by looking at other countries with a similar level of development to that of the exporting nation. This would then serve as the basis for establishing whether the product is being dumped on the European market.
The new EU rules, which the bloc says are "country-neutral," aim to prevent any state from artificially lowering the price of imported products through government intervention.
The commission the EU's executive will also draft reports on countries or sectors where price distortions take place. These will help companies complain about perceived cases of dumping.
Previously, the commission had made its assessments based on whether or not countries had market economy status, meaning domestic prices are freely set by supply and demand.
When China joined the WTO in 2001, the country was promised that it could be treated as a market economy as of December 2016. The EU, as well as the US, now dispute this recognition.
Source : Mia