Modern Commercial Policy: Managed Trade or Retaliation?

In this chapter, westudyworldwide antidumping (AD) case filing patterns in order to determine the extent to which economic versus strategic incentives explain the behavior of countries employing AD actions.We compare four main hypotheses: big supplier, big change in imports, tit-for-tat (TFT), and the club effect.We find strong support that AD actions are directed at big suppliers, but far weaker evidence that AD actions are filed against suppliers whose imports have surged. We also find very strong evidence that AD actions are used strategically to deter further use of AD and/or to punish trading partners who have used AD. Our findings reject the notion that the rise in AD activity is solely explained by an increase in unfair trading.