Dispute Settlement
World Trade Organization (WTO)
Canada/Other Countries - US - Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000 (DS 234) - (Byrd Amendment)
Canada expects U.S. to comply with WTO Byrd Decision
Backgrounder
On October 28, 2000, President Clinton signed the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act into law. The Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000 (Byrd Amendment) was part of that Act. The legislation, which amended the Tariff Act of 1930, provides that domestic producers who support petitions for anti-dumping and/or countervailing duty investigations may be eligible to participate in the distribution of duties collected as a result of the imposition of anti-dumping and/or countervailing duty orders.
Canada has long believed that these payments are not consistent with the WTO agreements governing anti-dumping and subsidies and countervailing measures, in that they constitute action against injurious dumping and subsidization not contemplated in either agreement. They also encourage the filing of petitions for anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations. Accordingly, Canada, along with the European Union, and a number of other countries (Australia, Brazil, Chile, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Korea and Thailand) challenged the Byrd Amendment before the WTO. A Panel was established on September 10, 2001. On July 17, an interim Panel report concluded that the Byrd Amendment is inconsistent with the WTO agreements on anti-dumping and on subsidies and countervailing measures and therefore should be removed. The final report was circulated to all WTO members on September 16, 2002. On October 18, 2002, it was appealed.
The United States will now have a reasonable period of time to implement the findings, i.e. remove the measure. Since this would likely require repealing the legislation, it is possible that the United States may have as long as 15 months to do so. If there is no agreement on implementation, the issue would go to WTO arbitration.
Over the past two annual periods, various U.S. producers have collected $207 million and $270 million in anti-dumping and countervailing duties. The total amount of duties paid out in countervailing and anti-dumping duties on imports from Canada was $5.2 million in 2001 and $1.9 million in 2002.
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