The WTO’s highest court ruled on Monday that an EU review of earlier anti-dumping duties on Chinese-made iron and steel fasteners – such as screws, nuts, and bolts – was insufficient to bring the measures in line with global trade rules. The WTO dispute ( DS397 ) was launched in 2009, when Beijing requested consultations with the 28-nation bloc on the anti-dumping duties, which at the time ranged from 26.5 to 85 percent. (See Bridges Weekly, 5 August 2009 ) At the time, China argued that both the EU’s Basic Anti-Dumping Regulation and its fasteners anti-dumping measure violated WTO rules. When dealing with non-market economies (NMEs), the EU’s Basic Anti-Dumping Regulation says that determining “normal value” – in other words, the product’s price domestically or production cost – allows for using an “appropriate market-economy third country.” Normal value is used in the calculation of dumping margins, which is the difference between normal value and export price. The regulation originally provided that in the case of imports from non-market economies, the duty shall be specified for the supplying country concerned rather than for each supplier. It also stated that an individual duty will only be specified for exporters that demonstrate that...
