US antidumping actions against China: the impact of China's entry into the World Trade Organization

This paper engages in a preliminary examination of US antidumping actions against China and addresses the conditions under which US industries are likely to initiate antidumping petitions against Chinese firms and obtain affirmative antidumping rulings from regulatory authorities. We conjecture that China's accession into the World Trade Organization (WTO) has not enhanced the prospect of Chinese firms successfully defending themselves against antidumping suits initiated by the US for three reasons. First, the rather dramatic expansion in US-China trade and, in particular, in US imports from China, has led US antidumping authorities to more aggressively pursue antidumping cases against China. Second, WTO membership has resulted in increasing US investment in China, thus undercutting the competitive advantage of some small domestic firms relative to those that have invested in the Chinese market, and leading the former to lobby more rigorously for protection from Chinese imports. Third, as China has agreed to the non-market economy (NME) designation in antidumping investigations for up to 15 years upon accession, its NME status has led US antidumping authorities to apply more stringent criteria in antidumping investigations. We support our argument with statistical analyses of the pattern of US antidumping initiation and adjudication against China.