Expanding Trade Remedy Scope: Cross-Border and Public Policy Subsidies

Abstract

On May 9, 2023, the U.S. Department of Commerce proposed amendments to the U.S. antidumping and countervailing/anti-subsidy (ADCV) duty regulations fundamentally altering the scope of economic activities captured within the scope of trade remedy laws. The proposed regulations expand ADCD actions to include a wide range of labor, human rights, environmental and intellectual property standards. Commerce’s new regulations make the failure to rigorously enforce national public policy standards directly and indirectly remediable by trade remedy laws by treating unenforced regulations as a subsidy. Antidumping regulations are similarly modified to increase production costs where public policy regulations are deemed weak or ineffective, thereby increasing antidumping duties. Commerce also proposes to eliminate the longtime transnational subsidies regulation which held that a subsidy did not exist if the program or project was funded by a government outside of the country where the recipient was located. A transnational subsidy is financial assistance or support provided by one country to producer in another country. This modification would make transnational subsidies an actionable subsidy under the trade remedy laws. antidumping, countervailing, anti-subsidy, trade remedy laws, labor, human rights, environmental, intellectual property standards, public policy standards, subsidy, production costs, transnational subsidies, financial assistance