China Requests WTO Panel to Examine EU's 'Non-Market Economy' Treatment for AD Purposes
China filed a request (here) on March 9 for the formation of a dispute panel to examine the EU’s “special calculation methodology” that it employs in antidumping duty cases, after consultations held Jan. 23 failed to resolve China’s concerns. While China requested consultations in December in response to U.S. and EU treatment of China as a “non-market economy” for AD duty purposes (see 1612120019), China has not requested formation of a dispute panel to examine U.S. calculation methodologies, a WTO spokesman said in an email. “At this point we have no indication what China's intentions are in regards to the dispute proceedings it initiated against the United States last December,” the spokesman said. China asserts that its 2001 WTO Protocol of Accession required that WTO members automatically grant it market economy status and that WTO members must stop using all alternative AD calculation methodologies on or after Dec. 11, when the protocol expired.
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China’s decision to request a dispute panel against the EU and not the U.S. equates to a “divide and conquer” strategy, AEGIS Europe, a coalition of European manufacturing associations, said in a March 13 statement (here). "Hoping that the EU is not planning a robust defence in Geneva, but already started changing its anti-dumping law, China is separating the EU from the U.S. in the hope of paving the way for further challenges if successful in the EU case and improving its chances of winning against both Europe and the U.S. at the WTO," it said. The EU needs to "stand firm" against China, "aligning itself with the US and other major trading partners, or risk rendering its anti-dumping instrument entirely ineffective against non-market economies like China," a spokesman for the group said. “Instead of rejecting China’s challenge outright and presenting a robust response, the EU has set about redrafting and weakening its anti-dumping legislation. Europe is bowing in to pressure even before any WTO ruling from Geneva clarifies what the EU's obligations actually are.”