Agence France Presse
BRUSSELS, March 31 (AFP) - The World Trade Organization has ruled in favor of the European Union in a case contending that the 1916 US Anti-Dumping Act violated WTO rules, the European Commission said Friday.
The Anti-Dumping Act, different from anti-dumping provisions of the US Tariff Act, allows federal courts to impose treble damages plus criminal penalties on persons who import goods bought at illegally low "dumping" prices.
The WTO found that the 1916 law, which has been invoked several times against EU member countries in recent years, violated WTO rules and constituted a "powerful and dangerous tool to hinder competition from imports," the EC said in a statement.
The EU had contended in its complaint against the US that the law went "well beyond what the anti-dumping provisions of the WTO allow in providing remedies such as civil and criminal penalties that are not foreseen in the WTO."
The US held the law was an anti-trust statute that did not cover anti-dumping practices and thus was exempt from the WTO's anti-dumping rules.
The WTO, in finding for the EU, ruled the law "covers anti-dumping practices, without fulfilling the basic conditions under which dumping measures can be challenged in the WTO."
It said the law violated WTO rules that "allow anti-dumping duties as the sole remedy against dumping."
The EU took up the case on a complaint by EUROFER, the European Confederation of Iron and Steel Industries.:
