New Zealand continues to seek ways to reform its anti-dumping and countervailing duties regime. Last year it had sought views on introduction of a bounded public interest test (Refer, International Trade Amicus, July 2014 issue) and now proposes to lay down the broad parameters and procedure to take into account the effect of AD, on public - parties other than domestic producers.
A supplementary discussion paper issued last month talks about introduction of an automatic termination period (ATP) such that duties are terminated after a set time period and it will not be possible for domestic industry to apply for re-imposition of duties, at least not until a minimum ‘stand down’ period has elapsed.
In its assessment of the pros and cons of an ATP, the discussion paper records that a set period will encourage industries to act within such time to adjust their prices instead extending AD’s for longer periods / abusing the instrument of AD. It is proposed that while seeking re-imposition of duties the industry should provide fresh evidence of injury. The paper also records that the proposal for ATP was part of the Doha round though it could not be finalised.