WTO rules U.S. Byrd amendment violates WTO antidumping rules

Kyodo News | July 17, 2002

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GENEVA, Jul 17, 2002 (Kyodo via COMTEX) -- A World Trade Organization (WTO) arbitration panel has ruled that a U.S. law that allows the U.S. government to share antidumping duties with the affected domestic industry violates WTO agreements, trade sources said Wednesday.

The sources said the WTO dispute settlement panel on Wednesday sent a confidential interim report on its ruling to the United States, Japan and other countries involved in the dispute.

The dispute involves the so-called Byrd Amendment, which allows antidumping tariffs collected by the U.S. government to be shared with domestic industries allegedly to help offset damages from cheap foreign imports.

Japan, the European Union and nine other parties to the dispute have complained that the Byrd Amendment violates WTO trade accords and amounts to "double protection" of U.S. manufacturers that benefit from antidumping tariffs imposed on foreign competitors.

According to trade sources, the amount of compensation handed out by U.S. government to U.S. domestic industries under the Byrd Amendment totaled $200 million through January this year.

The U.S. maintains the Byrd provision, which came into effect in October last year, is consistent with its WTO obligations, arguing that the U.S. government has the sovereign right to determine how revenues from antidumping duties would be used once they are in U.S. state coffers.

The WTO dispute settlement panel essentially rejected the U.S. argument and rules that the Byrd Amendment violates WTO's antidumping provisions and other trade rules under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the global regime that governed world trade before it was supplanted by the WTO.

The U.S. government is expected to appeal the WTO dispute settlement panel's decision to the WTO's appellate body.

The Byrd Amendment, sponsored by West Virginia Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, passed the U.S. Congress in October 2000 and then President Bill Clinton signed it into law.

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