Industry News

Commerce Withdraws Regulatory Provisions Governing Targeted Dumping

December 11, 2008


The Department of Commerce (DOC) has issued a federal register notice eliminating its regulations governing targeted dumping in all antidumping (AD) investigations initiated on or after December 10, 2008. Previously, the targeted dumping methodology could only be used when a pattern of export prices (or constructed export prices) differs significantly among purchasers, regions or periods of time and when such differences could not be taken into account by standard methodologies.

In the notice, DOC stated that it had issued the regulations without the benefit of any departmental experience on targeted dumping. In doing so, the DOC feels that it may have established thresholds or other criteria that have prevented the use of the targeted dumping methodology to unmask dumping, effectively denying relief to domestic industries suffering material injury from unfairly traded imports.

In order to ensure the proper and efficient operation of the antidumping law, the Department has withdrawnits previous regulations. As a result, the DOC is returning to a case-by-case adjudication until additional experience in evaluating allegations of targeted dumping allows it to gain a greater understanding of the issue.

The DOC’s removal of these regulations may make the use of the targeted dumping methodology more common in AD investigations.