The National Retail Federation is reviewing a draft text of proposed new trade remedy rules released today by the World Trade Organization, and will focus on whether the draft will result in reforms to end the increasing abuse of anti-dumping and countervailing duties mechanisms.
“One of the key objectives of American retailers in the Doha round is to obtain improvements and clarifications in the rules governing the use of anti-dumping and countervailing duty actions against imported products that will prevent abusive and unfair use of these measures and ensure that they do not undermine the competitiveness of U.S. retailers, manufacturers, and farmers,” NRF Vice President and International Trade Counsel Erik Autor said. “We will carefully review the text released today to ascertain whether it can serve as a basis for achieving the retail industrys goals in these negotiations.”
Autor said retailers, who maintain global supply chains to provide the widest range of quality consumer products to their customers, have been adversely and unfairly affected by the misuse of antidumping and countervailing duty actions in two ways. First, consumer goods are increasingly the targets of antidumping and countervailing duty actions, which can result in the imposition of millions of dollars in retroactive import taxes in the form of additional duties. Secondly, the ability of U.S. retailers opening stores in foreign markets to supply those stores and serve their customers is made increasingly difficult by trade barriers erected by foreign governments through the often arbitrary and non-transparent use of antidumping and countervailing measures. Exports of U.S. agricultural and manufactured products are also increasingly victims of these actions, with the United States now ranking third among the major targets of antidumping actions globally.
“Antidumping and countervailing duty measures clearly have their place in a rules-based trading system,” Autor said. “But we need to address unfair and abusive use of these measures that is having an adverse impact on U.S. companies by undermining hard-won gains in access to foreign markets, hurting their international competitiveness, and ultimately harming American jobs, particularly in manufacturing and agriculture.”
“NRF and the American retail industry will continue to work closely with the U.S. government, Congress, and the WTO to ensure that the final rules text will help create a trading system that supports the interests and competitiveness of all U.S. industries and workers,” Autor said.
