A Study On Lesser Duty Rule In Anti-dumping Law

For the time being, only few countries, such as E.U. and India, consider injury margin when imposing anti-dumping duty or amount. When the injury margin is less than dumping margin, the anti-dumping duty or amount should be determined according the lesser margin, which is the so called "Lesser Duty Rule". The current Anti-dumping Agreement provides a "discretionary lesser duty rule", under this rule, an authority enjoys wide discretion as to whether and how to impose a lesser duty. It has certain theoretical and practical significance to do a research on Lesser Duty Rule, this article attempts to provide support for "mandatory lesser duty rule" as follows:The first chapter examines the reasonability of Lesser Duty Rule. In this chapter, the author provides that the reason to impose anti-dumping duty or amount is to offset the injury of domestic industry causing by dump import. To support this argument, the author examines the logical construction of the Anti-dumping Agreement, the legislation purpose of anti-dumping regulation, the characteristic of trade restriction measure in WTO and the beneficiary impact bring by imposing anti-dumping measure.Chapter two deals with the Doha Round discussion on Lesser Duty Rule. Proposals from major member of WTO on Lesser Duty Rule were organized in this chapter, the author also comments on this proposals, analyses conflict among multilateral interest groups.Chapter three deals with legislation and practice in some countries, especially in EC. Since EC gains great number of experience on applying Lesser Duty Rule, for example, nearly 40% of anti-dumping measures apply injury margin as standard to account anti-dumping duty, it is significant to do a research on EC legislation and practice of this rule. In this chapter, some other countries' experience would be also examined.Chapter four provides my proposals to our country. Base on the above discussion and the situation China confront with in anti-dumping, I suggest that we, China should suppose the WTO embody a mandatory Lesser Duty Rule, and we also should embody Lesser Duty Rule in our law. As to the specific method to calculate injury margin, I think it can keep discretionary.