Anti-Dumping Retaliation -- A Common Threat to International Trade

With the virtual elimination of tariffs and quotas under the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs/World Trade Organization (GATT/WTO) regime, anti-dumping (AD) has emerged as a key instrument of protection. In recent times there has been a sharp increase in anti-dumping initiations by many of the WTO member countries. Under the new regime of anti-dumping, India has joined traditional users namely, the United States and the European community to become the top three users of anti-dumping laws within the last ten years. In this article we have selected 20 countries on the basis of the number of AD initiations, the number of AD measures, affected by number of AD initiations and affected by number of AD measures for a two-way analysis. Out of this analysis we have taken the top-four countries namely, India, China, United States and the European community and tried to examine the possibility of occurrence of retaliation against them. The correlation test reveals that out of the total anti-dumping cases some of them are likely to be considered as cases of retaliation. The test reacted positively by providing indications of occurrence of retaliation in many cases of anti-dumping by, as well as against, these four countries