Study Of The U.s. Countervailing Duty Law

The countervailing measures are three trade remedy measures under the regime of the WTO. This measure is usually taken by the WTO members as a trade sanction measure to the market economy countries in the filed of international trade. In November 2006, the Department of Commerce of United States (U.S.) announced the initiation of a countervailing duty investigation on coated free sheet paper imported from the People's Republic of China(China) and the preliminary decision and the final decisions are being made against China in the year of 2007. The number of countervailing cases between U.S. and China has rise to eight until the end of the year of 2007. It could be estimated that accompanying the establishment of the market economy regime and the development of the export trade, it is highly probable that other WTO member would quickly apply its subsidy law towards China. Starting from the present situations of the legal issue on the imposing of countervailing measures by U.S. to China, using the cross perspective of legal study and the economic study, this paper has done some research on the countervailing disputes between U.S. and China and has proposed the collective strategy and the specific corresponding measures on the countervailing dispute between America and China.This paper has approximately 70,000 words and was being divided into six parts beside the preface and the conclusion.The first part of the paper mainly discussed the definition of subsidy and the countervailing measures and the present situation of the countervailing disputes of U.S. and China, pointing out that the initiation of the countervailing measure investigation is the landmark of the imposition of the countervailing duties on China.The second part has introduced the development of the U.S. countervailing law and the countervailing investigation procedure with the emphasis on the origin of the Non-Market Economy (NME). This part mainly analyzed the legal origin from the "non- applicable to the NMEs" to the "conditionally applicable" to the NMEs such as China, of the American Countervailing law.The third part mainly analyzed the reason for the changing of the long standing precedent of the U.S and the influence it might impose on China. The U.S.'s imposition of the countervailing measures to China is intent to limit the exportation of the Chinese product and to balance its adverse trade deficit. Comparatively speaking, the imposition of the countervailing measures bears more political significance than the imposition of the anti-dumping duties for that the imposition of the countervailing measures bears the possibility of indirect intervention of the economic control and the economic management of the government. In a certain period of time, China would have to face the possibility of the initiation of the countervailing investigation and the anti-dumping investigation.The fourth part of the paper is the analysis of the U.S. standard on the determination of the Non-market Economy and the legal unscramble of problem on the initiation of the countervailing investigation. This paper while admitting the substantial and procedure legality of imposing the countervailing duties to the Non-market Economy, made an regulation unscramble on the legal basis of the initiation of the countervailing duty investigation and its unfairness, especially pointing out that, on the one hand, U.S. did not admit the market economy status so that to take advantage of the surrogate country practice in the anti-dumping proceeding so as to get some unfair advantages in the international trade, on the other hand, starting from the coated free sheet paper countervailing duty case, U.S has initiated the countervailing investigation to China without the recognition of China's market economy status, thus to use the originally non-applicable countervailing measures to bearing more benefit than Chinese product thus has constituted the double discrimination and has violated the fair trade principle.The fifth part of the paper has made an expectation to the trade disputes between U.S. and China on the countervailing measures. China is in a better situation in the field of trade and the U.S is in a better situation in the managing the trade disputes, however, the interdependency between the China's export market and the U.S.'s import market determined that though the trade dispute between the U.S and China would still exist in a certain period of time, it is reasonable to conclude that the trade relationship between two countries would kept on going forward.The sixth part of the paper has proposed the collective strategy and the specific Countermeasures on dealing with the trade disputes between U.S. and China. China should amend and improve the current subsidy and countervailing law of our country, adjust and improve the countervailing policy, and to solve the legal disputes and the other problems on the countervailing issue between U.S. and China through bilateral negotiation, the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) of the WTO. The final solving of this disputes are based on the change of the increase mood of the international trade, to alter the price champion sale mood of the enterprises of the international trade, to transform form a big commerce country to a strong commerce country. It is important to solve the disputes through the trade compensation, high-lateral dialogue and the disputes settlement mechanism.