International Trade Law News

The European Commission has announced that it is not ready to grant market economy status to China for purposes of antidumping investigations. China's WTO accession protocol allows WTO members to use an antidumping "methodology that is not based on a strict comparison with domestic prices or costs in China if the producers under investigation cannot clearly show that market economy conditions prevail in the industry producing the product with regard to manufacture, production and sale of that product." That exemption, which allows WTO members to treat China as a non-market economy in antidumping investigations, expires in 2016. WTO members can graduate China as a whole, or any of its industries individually, to market economy status anytime before then. See Protocol on the Accession of the People's Republic of China to the World Trade Organization," World Trade Organization, Nov. 23, 2001, Paragraph 15(ii).

Australia granted China market economy status in April 2005, but most other countries, including the U.S., still consider China to possess a non-market economy.