It is reported that on May 14th 2009, the World Trade Organization’s issued its report regarding compliance in the complaint by the European Communities in the case "United States - Laws, Regulations and Methodology for Calculating Dumping Margins" involving the US’ method of dealing with unfairly priced imports.

In its report, the WTO urged the US to comply with previous WTO rulings in the dispute Both the US and the EU had appealed against a verdict by a WTO compliance panel in December last year. The ruling was a further setback for the controversial US method, known as zeroing, of imposing antidumping duties on imports which are sold less than they cost at home. December’s panel found the US had failed to comply with an original dispute ruling in 2005 and a subsequent appeal in 2006 involving duties on imports of steel products, adopted by the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body.

The Appellate Body in the ruling report said that "To the extent that the US has failed to comply with recommendations and rulings of the DSB in the original proceedings, they remain operative." The report added that "The Appellate Body recommends that the DSB request the US to implement fully the recommendations and rulings of the DSB.”

The appeal court has consistently ruled against zeroing, which is opposed by all the WTO’s 153 members except the US. However, it has now upheld the original compliance panel finding that the US had wrongly continued to base its assessment of antidumping duties on imports of steel products from the Netherlands and Sweden on zeroing after the reasonable period of time it was given to comply with the rulings. It also supported EU claims regarding assessments of duties made during the reasonable period of time, and said the United States was in breach of the rules in those cases. However, the court backed the previous panel’s rejection of some other EU claims.

from Steel Orbis

Source: steelguru.com