Industry coalition rails against Commerce’s use of “zeroing”

Industry coalition rails against Commerce’s use of “zeroing”

Industry coalition rails against Commerce’s use of “zeroing”

The Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition asked the Bush administration to end its use of “zeroing” in antidumping cases in the wake of Friday’s announcement by the Japanese government that it will request the World Trade Organization to authorize Japan to impose $250 million in retaliatory tariffs against U.S. exports.
   The Japanese government said the United States has failed to comply with its WTO obligation to end the practice.
   Zeroing refers to the treatment of export sales to the United States when they are compared to “normal value,” or foreign value of similar goods in antidumping proceedings. Goods that are sold for less than their normal value have “positive” comparisons. However, when the Commerce Department finds transactions in the United States that occur at prices higher than normal value, it chooses to disregard those sales, “zeroing” them, rather than averaging them into the final calculations as the WTO requires.
   “By reducing the impact of those transactions on the final calculations, the DOC’s practice of zeroing leads to artificially inflated dumping margins,” CITAC said.
   To date, the United States has ended zeroing only in original investigations using a method of comparing foreign “normal value” and export prices to the United States. Zeroing is still used in administrative reviews and other antidumping proceedings, the coalition noted.
   CITAC warned that Japan’s retaliatory tariffs would have a negative impact at a time when U.S. exports are starting to resurge.
   “By failing to adhere to our obligations under the WTO, we have opened the door for our trading partners to punish U.S. exporters,” said Steve Alexander, CITAC executive director. ' Chris Gillis