U.S. Antidumping Investigations Against China: Does China's WTO Membership Restrain the U.S.' Use of Discriminatory Antidumping Practices?

The People's Republic of China has been the number one target of antidumping actions filed by the U.S. Commerce Department on behalf of various domestic industries. This paper examines U.S. antidumping (AD) actions against China from 1980 to 2004. Specifically, it addresses both the conditions under which U.S. industries apply for protection from regulatory authorities against China and the likelihood of their obtaining an affirmative ruling from the International Trade Commission. While our statistical analysis of U.S. antidumping actions against China affirms the importance of standard political economy explanations of U.S. antidumping decision-making, it also emphasizes how industries characterized by high levels of intra-industry trade has tended to generate more AD actions against China. In addition, the paper assesses the impact of China's membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the pattern of initiation and imposition of AD actions by the United States against that country, postulating that China's WTO membership may not have had the effect of deterring U.S. protectionism via the antidumping instrument as the designation of China as a non-market economy under the WTO has led U.S. AD authorities to apply more stringent criteria in dealing with AD case against that country. This counter-intuitive finding suggests that under certain circumstances, the legal framework of the WTO can facilitate trade protectionism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]