New Podcast: US-China Trade Relations and the Big CVD/NME Mess

Well, this was unexpected.

Given all of the information on the CVD/NME issue that I've thrown onto the interwebs over the last several days, now's a good time to recap where things stand.  So here's a summary of my most significant blog posts on the CVD/NME issue and the court case (GPX Int'l Tire Corp. v. United States) that threw everything into flux:

Over the last few days, I've tried to document the myriad problems surrounding current Obama administration policies related to trade remedies (i.e., anti-dumping, countervailing duty and safeguards) actions against Chinese imports.

Since the US Department of Commerce in 2007 changed 20 years of settled policy and decided to start imposing anti-subsidy (countervailing) duties on imports from China, there have been dozens of CVD cases (and resulting remedial tariffs) against Chinese imports of steel, textiles, chemicals and other products.  A new decision from the US Court of International Trade, however, calls all of those cases into question and could have broader implications for congressional efforts to attack China's currency policy.

As I've repeatedly mentioned over the last several weeks, one of the biggest concerns surrounding the recently enacted law allowing the Commerce Department to impose countervailing duties on imports from countries deemed to be "non-market economies" under the US anti-dumping law was the law's retroactive application to the 24 completed CVD/NME investigations (and the collection of duties pursuant to those cases) that Commerce completed without proper legal authority.

Yesterday, the WTO's Appellate Body delivered a pretty significant smackdown on the United States in its dispute with China over the US imposition of anti-dumping (AD) duties and countervailing duties (CVDs) on Chinese imports.  The decision follows a string of losses by China at the WTO.

As you may recall, when the US government implemented a new law in March retroactively applying countervailing duties to imports from non-market economies (NMEs) like China and Vietnam, I opined that (contrary to what the staff on the House Ways & Means Committee were claiming)legal challenges in both US courts and the WTO were inevitable.  The US court cases were quick to follow and a c

On Friday, Plaintiffs in the long-running court drama GPX Int'l Tire Corp. v. United States filed with the US Court of International Trade case briefs arguing that the March 2012 law revising US countervailing duty (CVD) law to apply to imports from "non-market economies" like China and Vietnam was unconstitutional.  (The details of the GPX case are far too numerous for tonight, but you can go here for a lot of the backstory.)