WTO court rules against US' AD method

The World Trade Organization's Appellate Body yesterday ruled that some methods used by the US to determine whether imported goods are being dumped violate global trade rules. The Appellate Body repealed a previous decision by a WTO panel of judges which had largely sided with US in the dispute with the European Union (EU) over a practice known as "zeroing." "Today's ruling is a positive step in establishing a level playing field in transatlantic trade," EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said yesterday in a statement. The EU dispute had challenged 31 separate determinations of antidumping duties applied by the US using the zeroing method. The duties are involving products such as steel, ball bearings, pasta and chemicals. The EU officials indicated that in most of the cases no antidumping duty would have been imposed if the US had not used “zeroing” procedures to determine the scale of dumping. The US uses a range of prices of imported goods to determine whether they are being sold at prices lower than the prices in their own country. However, the US excludes those cases in which the export price of foreign producer is actually higher, known as "zeroing" in trade jargon. US officials voiced their objection to the Appellate Body's decision, which is final and cannot be appealed; however, the US will be given time to abide by the verdict.