On The Applicability Of Countervailing Measures Of Subsidy Toward Non-market Economy

The United States is the country most commonly used countervailingmeasures in the world, but it had never taken such measures toward Non-Market Economies until the Department of Commerce initiatedcountervailing investigation on coated free sheet paper imported fromChina. Meanwhile, the U.S. congress has made continuing efforts toamend the domestic countervailing rules in order to make thecountervailing measures lawfully applicable to China. It is foreseeablethat other WTO members will take countervailing measures toward Chinain future as China will gradually develop the export trade further, so itleaves us more urgent to study the legal issues on the applicability ofcountervailing measures toward China from the standpoint of the U.S.And the critical problem is that if there are legal basis both multilaterallyand domestically to support the idea of taking countervailing measurestoward Non-Market Economy. First of all, the author looks into the countervailing rules from amultilateral perspective, reviews the evolving history of WTOcountervailing measure and analyses the context meaning of the currentavailable rules. Then the author examines the rules from a unilateralview, analyses the development of U.S. countervailing statute law withrepresentative value as well as the milestone case in the subsidy andcountervailing area as Georgetown Steel Case. What's more, the authorfurther studies the recent trends on the applicability toward Non-MarketEconomy and different parties' opinion in the recent case of U.S-ChinaCoated Free Sheet Paper. Based on the above analysis, the author finallyconcludes that there is no legal obstacle to apply the countervailing lawson Non-Market Economy, and provides some suggestions to China, stillbeing regarded as Non-Market Economy, to return to the multilateralstage of WTO to deal with the countervailing challenges.