반덤핑협정의 문제점 및 개정방향-WTO체제적 접근

Abstract

The Doha New Round of WTO negotiations has adopted as its agenda not only trade liberalization but also such an ambitious issue as clarifying and improving WTO rules. This means that the WTO system is now passing through ‘take-off’ stage and enters into the next stage of ‘drive-to-maturity’, in which predictability, judicialization, and horizontal balance(parallelism) among its rules are empathized. At this juncture, Korea as a major state interested in the anti-dumping rules must perform a systemic review of the rules and garner supports from like-minded countries. In doing this, Korea has to pay careful attention to ‘systemic issues’ for which focus is to be given on proper balance and relationship between anti-dumping rules and the rest of the WTO jurisprudence. Thus, it is necessary to identify systemic problems of the existing anti-dumping rules and to produce directions of their amendment. The followings are the summary: First, it should be noted that the standards of de minims margin and negligible imports in anti-dumping rules are not in line with comparable standards of countervailing rules. Given that both sets of rules are sharing a common function of dealing with unfair trade, the same or parallel standards must be adopted in both rules. Second, the Anti-dumping Agreement provides a unique standard of review which is vastly different from the general standard of review. It needs to be examined whether this anti-dumping standard should be abrogated or, at least, be changed to another form which is more acceptable from the systemic perspective. Third, in order to prevent the ‘chain complaint’ phenomenon, the Anti-dumping Agreement must provide that re-initiation of the anti-dumping investigation is prohibited during a certain time period after the conclusion of a prior investigation procedure. In this light, comparable provisions in the Safeguard Agreement must be referred to. Fourth, it is widely known that one-and-half year period of WTO dispute settlement procedure costs large expense to enterprises subject to anti-dumping regulations. Thus, anti-dumping rules should establish the ‘fast-track’ dispute settlement procedure in parallel with the actionable subsidy rules. Fifth, the ‘like product’ concept in the anti-dumping context must be clarified so as not to include ‘potential or future competition’ factor in the concept. Sixth, mutual exemption of anti-dumping duty imposition between parties to a regional trade agreement is permitted under interpretation of current rules. It could be considered to clarify this understanding through adding a relevant provision to the Anti-dumping Agreement. Seventh, it may be considered to introduce a new anti-dumping system based on the ‘traffic-lights theory’, according to which anti-dumping investigations are limited to cases where export prices are lower than average total production cost, but higher than average variable production cost, of the enterprise subject to the investigation.