The slowdown of international trade has led to a sudden spurt in complaints of unfair trade practices by WTO member nations and pushed up anti dumping investigations to a four year high in 2008. The figures released by the WTO shows that anti dumping investigations that seek to put curbs on specific product imports has steadily declined from a peak number of 366 in 2001 to a twelve year low of 136 in 2007 has once again suddenly shot up by more than a quarter to 208 in 2008.
Leading the list of aggrieved countries was the developing countries like India, Brazil, Turkey, Argentina and China. In sharp contrast while some developed countries like the US and Japan, which have been the worst hit by the global slump, have reduced their new investigations others like the EU also launched a flurry of new investigations in a bid to clamp down on low priced imports.
While anti dumping investigations launched by India went up from 47 in 2007 to 54 in 2008 that of Brazil shot up from 13 to 23. The pick up of complaints was much greater in Turkey where anti dumping investigations rose from 6 to 22 over the last two years. The investigations launched by Argentina more than doubled from 8 in 2007 to 19 in 2008.
And the Chinese authorities went all out with the anti dumping investigations shooting up more than three fold from 4 in 2007 to 14 in 2008.
Among the developed countries the United States and Japan were apparently not bothered about the threat from cheap priced imports. Numbers show that between 2007 and 2008 the anti dumping investigations launched by the United States went down from 28 to 16 while that of Japan went down from 4 to zero during the period. Korea also seems to be less impacted with the number of investigations going down to a third from 15 to 5.
But the EU, in contrast, was among the more aggrieved as the new investigations launched more than doubled from 9 in 2007 to 19 in 2008. Other less hurt developed nations included Canada and Australia. While the investigations launched by Canada went up from 1 in 2007 to 3 in 2008 that of Australia grew by 2 to 6.
But what is more interesting than the divide between developed and developing countries are the shift in the battle ground markets. While the majority of the anti dumping investigations in 2007 were focussed on products like Chemicals (53), machinery (29), metals (24), wood pulp(19) and plastics (16) the slump in 2008 seem to have shifted the focus area of disputes rather sharply.
Leading the product groups where new anti dumping investigations were launched in 2008 were metals (64), followed by textiles (39), chemicals (33), plastics (20), and machinery (16). In fact the trends between 2007 and 2008 show that while anti dumping investigations launched on metals, textile and plastic products went up in 2008 that in machinery and chemical products even declined sharply during the period.
While the anti dumping investigations against metal products rose by 40 in 2008 that on textile products went up by 29. Other important products where anti dumping investigations increased include that on wood products (9), optical and measuring instruments (6), vegetable products (4) and plastic products (4). In contrast the number of anti dumping investigations initiated fell by 20 in the case of chemical products, 17 in pulp products, 13 in machinery and mechanical appliances and by 4 in mineral products.
China, as usual, headed the pack of countries facing charges of dumping cheaper products in other national markets. Anti dumping investigations against China went up to an all time high of 73 in 2008 from 61 in 2007. Most of the other major nations whose products came up for scrutiny were also from Asia. They included Thailand (13), Taiwan (10), Indonesia (10), Korea (9) and India (6).
Though anti dumping investigations launched against developed country products were more rare and far between there was still a mild increase in complaints. While anti dumping investigations against the United States products rose from 7 in 2007 to 8 in 2008 that against products from the United Kingdom rose from zero to 3 during the period.