USA's Anti-dumping Case Study Against Korean Steel Products

In order to establish a fair trading environment and protect its members' domestic industries,the WTO allows members to use punitive anti-dumping duties.However,in order to protect their industries,some countries have violated the interests of importers by adopting measures such as the abuse of the rules of the WTO,illegally levying anti-dumping duties and other measures to restrict imports.This phenomenon has raised concerns that the existence of the WTO is not only meaningless,but can also shake the basis of multilateral free trade order itself.The United States,which has a strong influence in the international trade order,is putting in place various protectionist policies that shake this free trade trend,and there is a sign that the protection trade policy triggered by the United States recently will spread to the whole world.In February 2018,US President Trump stated that the United States will impose a 25%tariff on imported steel products for a long period of time and will impose a 10%import tariff on aluminum products.According to the statistics of the International Trade Organization,although US steel imports come from more than 100 countries,three quarters of the steel imports come from eight countries and regions.In 2017,the main exporter of steel imported in the US was Canada,which accounted for 16%of total US steel imports,followed by Brazil,which accounted for 13%of total US steel imports.The third place is South Korea,which accounts for 10%of total US steel imports.The rest come from Mexico,Russia,Turkey,Japan and Taiwan.For South Korea,an ally of the United States,this is the second time that Washington has attempted to give a hardship to its economy in 2018.In January 2018,President Trump announced trade measures for washing machines and solar photovoltaic panels.It is reported that the tariffs imposed on imported solar panels will mainly impact Asian exporters.Data shows that over 80%of solar installations in the United States rely on imported solar panels,of which 36%are from Malaysia,21%from Korea,9%from Thailand,9%from Vietnam,8%from China,and the remaining 17%from other countries.According to statistics,South Korea has already been the subject of major US trade measures in 2018,because South Korea is its the third-largest exporter of steel products and the second largest exporter of solar panels.The United States and South Korea alliance has been going on for decades,but President Trump has turned the helm towards trade frictions with South Korea.The Korean government has to seriously consider coping strategies.In this paper,recognizing this fact,I try,through the analysis of cases filed with the WTO DSB,to understand whether the US anti-dumping measures against Korean steel products have been carried out on legal basis and what the problems of US anti-dumping measures were.In antidumping measures in the United States,in order to prevent an arbitrary interpretation of the law and inconsistent practice of the United States,Korea has to cooperate with other countries who are sharing interests with it in the new multilateral trade negotiations to strengthen external pressure to align the discrepancies between the WTO anti-dumping regime and the US anti-dumping law.