U.s. Coated Paper Countervailing Case Empirical Analysis

On November 20, 2006, The Department of Commerce of the US(DOC) announced to conduct its countervailing investigation upon imported Chinese coated free sheet paper(CFS). This case is called " America's first CVD( short for countervailing duty) case against China", which also is the first CVD case against an NME worldwide. While conducting the CVD investigation, DOC also carried on its anti-dumping(AD) investigation using a surrogate country to determine the normal value of imported CFS from China.This is a signal which indicates that the US has started to apply its CVD law to China officially, which also means Chinese export products is threatened by anti-dumping and countervailing measures simultaneously. This case also sets up an example for other countries who has not acknowledged China's market economy status. This may create dual discrimination against Chinese products all around the world. Thus it is of great practice value and practical significance to study this case thoroughly and to propose some effective suggestions.Because no country had taken countervailing measures to Chinese products before Canada did in 2004, there is little study conducted on this matter. Because this is also the first time CVD measures and "surrogate country" methods were adopted in the same case, the research material is especially scarce. Even though there are a few articles on magazines and newspapers, most of them are not analysis from the legal point of view. No research paper has focused on this matter up until now as far as I know.After consulting books and reference materials in the library, searching websites in Chinese or English and reading related case data, the writer adopt the research method on substantial evidences to analyze this case under the American national law and the international law to examine the legality of applying CVD law to Chinese products and the rationality of taking both countervailing measures and AD measures against China and to provide some suggestions for reference to face the future countervailing battle.This paper is composed of four parts, about approximately 20 000 Chinese characters in total. The paper is going to explore the matter through four steps, i.e. introducing the case, discussing related theory, analyzing the case and discussing enlightenment gained from the case.Part One is about the fundamental results about the case and is divided into three sections including basic situation, the dispute focuses and major reasoning of each party.Part Two discusses the international economic rules and regulations the case involves, namely the related subsidy and the countervailing rules and basic theory thereof, in order to provide theory basis for the case analysis in Part Three.Part Three deals with case analysis which is the core of this paper. This part is divided into two sections, discussing the legality of applying CVD law to Chinese products and the rationality of taking both countervailing measures and AD measures against China simultaneously based on the rules and theory, analyzing the main points of the US and China and drawing conclusions about the legality and rationality of the case.Part four is about the countermeasure enlightenment abstained from case analysis. While analyzing experience and lessons gained through this case, this part summarizes possible and feasible strategies China should take during future similar cases. This part includes two sections and proposes seven feasible suggestions which can be taken before and after CVD investigation is initiated.