WASHINGTON — A World Trade Organization dispute panel sided with China in challenging U.S. antidumping duties on imports of shrimp and sawblades, in yet another ruling against a controversial method of calculating antidumping duties that the Obama administration recently agreed to end.
The panel found the use of the so-called "zeroing" method to determine duties when products are being dumped, or sold below market value, was inconsistent with global trade rules, the WTO announced Friday. With zeroing, any prices above normal are ignored when comparing similar products, which China and several other countries argue artificially inflates the value of their exports.
A USTR spokeswoman said that while the Obama administration disagrees with the WTO rulings against zeroing, the Commerce Department has already ended the practice.
Earlier this year, the U.S. agreed to end the use of zeroing in any antidumping cases, ending a nine-year dispute at the WTO and avoiding hundreds of millions of dollars in retaliatory measures threatened by Japan and the European Union.
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