| Since Canada initiated anti-dumping and countervailing investigation against Chinese outdoor grills on April 2004, the United States, South Africa, Australia and other countries followed. According to Chinese Ministry of Commerce, from 2004 to 2008, China suffered 24 countervailing investigation cases, accounts for 51.1% of the total number of cases within the world (47 cases), which made China the WTO member suffered most from countervailing investigations, and the WTO member most severely suffered in 3 subsequent years (2006, 2007 and 2008). In 2009, China suffered 13 (the highest annual amount) countervailing investigations, including 10 initiated by United States (accounts for 76.9% of the 13 cases), 1 by Australia, Canada and India each. Countervailing investigations has become one of the new areas and hotspots of Chinese trade frictions, which is no only a theoretical topic, but also a practical problem faced by Chinese government and export enterprises. Countervailing investigations directly challenge Chinese macro-economic policy, which seriously affect the stability of Chinese economic policy and international competitiveness of related industries. The situation China faces is grim.Among all WTO members who applied countervailing measures against Chinese products, the United States initiated the most countervailing investigations with the highest frequency. With the influence of the financial crisis, trade protectionism in US rises, and the pressure seeking more protection over domestic industries is increasing. Trade unions such as the United Steelworker Unions challenge against Chinese products frequently. It is expected that countervailing cases against Chinese products will increase rapidly in the near future. The United States is the second largest trade partner of China, its countervailing investigations will be one of the top priorities in China's response to countervailing investigations. However, there is still lack of systematic and detailed research of US countervailing laws in China. This thesis, taking US countervailing laws as its object, through a large number of practical cases, to study its substantive rules & provisions and its application in cases (including cases against China), with the intention to provide some support and reference for relevant sectors to research and resolve related issues.This thesis is composed of six chapters.Chapterâ… consists of economic and political analysis of subsidies and countervailing duty measures. Various academic genres are set out in the beginning of the chapter, which was briefly summarized from four different angels: global, subsidy providing party, affected party, and relations between the providing party and the affected party. Subsequently, based on analytical tools of micro-economy, this chapter expresses the basic route and effectiveness of subsidy and countervailing duty measures. Finally in this chapter, with the political and economic analysis, describes the political background behind the formation of US'rules on countervailing duty measure, which is the imbalance between trade protectionism seeking camp and the group who bear expense for the previous camp. So called"Import Competition Group", who is directly affected by imported products (including imported products accepting export subsidy), could canvass the Congress and government with great pressure. And such actions will necessarily lead to the occurrence of countervailing duty measures as one of the important parts of US'trade protectionism. Chapterâ…¡refers to the historical evolution of US countervailing rules and its interactions with multi-lateral rules. This chapter reviews the historical evolution of the US countervailing laws, combined with formation and development of subsidy and countervailing rule in GATT / WTO rules, discuss the interaction between the U.S. countervailing law and multilateral rules. United States is the first country who established countervailing laws and the country applied the most countervailing measures in the world, no other WTO member could compete with the US, whether in perspective of the integrity of theoretical system or the practical operation and application of countervailing practice. Furthermore, the US countervailing system played a very important role in the formation and development of the history of GATT/WTO countervailing rules. Many important rules, including subsidies classification, specificity test in subsidy identification, material injury, cumulate analysis, came from the US domestic practice. In the negotiation of Doha Round, the US tried to bring issues remain unresolved in last rounds, such as Nature Resource and Energy Pricing, back to the multi-lateral framework, to limit other members'subsidy policies.Chapterâ…¢refers to subsidies identification in the US countervailing rules. This chapter discusses the core issue of the US countervailing rules, subsidy. It mainly discuss the definition of subsidy, classification of the three elements, and specificity test, upstream subsidy, pass of benefit in privatize process. This chapter finds out that the US countervailing law states general provisions on this core issue, provides investigation authority with enormous discretionary power, and leave defendants with great difficulty. On the identification of subsidies, there exists a trend of scope enlargement in US investigation authority. For instance, being lack of detailed provisions on some key expressions over specificity test, which is one of the judgment standards of countervailable subsidy, the investigation authority could easily conclude a subsidy is a specific one, and therefore the subsidy is a countervailable subsidy. As for subsidies provided by government through private organizations, US officers also prefer to interpret with enlargement, in order to prevent US countervailing laws been avoided by such indirect subsidies.Chapterâ…£refers to the identification problem of injury and the identification of causal link in the US countervailing rules. For injury, the following questions are analyzed: like product, domestic industry and cumulate valuation which was invented by US countervailing laws. For the causal link, the following issues are mainly discussed: its historical evolvement, approaches of identification in practical cases, and the problem of non-attribution. Because cumulate valuation and loose standards on causal link is applies in US, the composition of injury and causal link is comparatively easy, which secured the carrying out of countervailing investigation and the final measures.Chapterâ…¤refers to legal problems resulting from the US'countervailing investigations against Chinese products. The evolution and the reasons of application of US countervailing laws to Chinese products are summarized, and the cases of US against Chinese products and major problems are listed. As a conclusion of this chapter, in practical cases, there are deviation on a certain degree in US investigations on aspects such as identification of Chinese state-owned enterprise, specification of loans from commercial banks, benchmarks used in profit calculation. Such deviation are not fair to Chinese enterprises, and are inconsistent with US'former countervailing practice, nor rules and cases of WTO rules on dispute settlement.Chapterâ…¥refers to the strategy of China's response. Based on the analysis of subsidies in US countervailing cases against Chinese products, and similar domestic subsidies, the strategy of China's response and the space of future research is stated. The author finds out there exists large quantities of subsidies with specificity in china, including geographic and industrial specific subsidies, export subsidies and import replacement subsidies. Above mentioned subsidies could be targets of investigation in the future US countervailing cases. It is suggested that: Chinese government shall sort out present subsidy policies, set up a database on domestic subsidy policy as soon as possible, adjust existing subsidy policies on subsidy providing parties which can not be sued, initiate countervailing investigations and other measures to strike back on appropriate time. Chinese government shall also actively make use of domestic and international remedy methods, take effort for more Chinese voices in multi-lateral rules, and try to achieve a thorough resolution on the layer of rules.
|
PDF Full Text Request