Interaction Relations Between Antidumping Law And Competition Law

The original object of antidumping law was to regulate the price discrimination, maintain the order of market competition. Therefore, its object approximately conforms to that of competition law in maintaining equal and free order of market competition. However, the subsequent object of it deflected, and increasingly turned to one of the tools of trade protectionism. Actually, the antidumping turned into instrument for the restraint of competition. The antidumping didn't protect fair competition but itself produced unfair competition.Because of the limitation of the present antidumping law, experts think that the present antidumping agreements and antidumping laws in different countries that negatively effect on competition should be comprehensively improved. In accordance with the investigation on the interaction relations between antidumping law and competition law, four schemes have been put forward: firstly, replacing the present antidumping law with uniform international competition law or antimonopoly law; secondly, setting a law frame to harmonize the competition law of different countries according to GATS and TRIPs in the WTO system; thirdly, replacing the present antidumping measures with safeguards; fourthly, amending the present antidumping law through blending more competition regulations.International community has made great efforts in harmonizing the conflicts between the antidumping law and competition law through bilateral and multilateral agreements. According to ANZCERTA (Australia-New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement) in 1988, these two countries agreed to cease applying antidumping law and resolve the antidumping disputes between them by their competition law in July 1994. NAFTA has also formulated special disputes settlement measure for antidumping and countervailing. The EU advanced more in applying uniform EU competition law among its members instead of antidumping laws.Till now, the Implementation of Article VI of GATT (Antidumping Regulations 1994) is one of the most successful achievements in international trade. The Regulations doesn't explain whether the dumping is fair or not but focus on whether members can response to dumping and establish uniform regulations. The first Ministerial meeting held in Singapore in Dec. 1996 decided to set up a work group dealing with the interaction between the antidumping law and competition law but the working group has got few fruits.There are many reasons that China's commodities were repeatedly accused of antidumping by the foreign countries before China's entering into WTO. It's undoubted that the first antidumping case played important role in China's antidumping history, but some of the disadvantages had not been clarified. Antidumping actually is a kind of trade barriers. The thought of all dumping having harmful effect should be abolished when China participates in the bilateral and multilateral negotiations about the relations between antidumping law and competition law. The competition regulations should be utilized in the improvement of national and international antidumping law.The viewpoint of this paper is that the antidumping law should be altered from protecting competitor to protecting the competition. The foreign enterprises should not be treated discriminatingly in order to meet the national treatment principle. The competition policies should be melted into the process of the improvement of antidumping law, as to raise the threshold of antidumping, to add the public interest clause into antidumping law and to punish the abuse of antidumping investigation measures. Even more regulations of the competition law melting into antidumping law can greatly effect on the harmonization between the antidumping law and competition law, I think it will take a long time to make it come true.