WTO Announces Arbitrators in Frozen Fries Dispute
The World Trade Organization Oct. 12 announced the three arbitrators who will preside over the Colombia and EU arbitration proceeding over Colombia's antidumping duties on frozen fries from Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands: Jose Alfredo Graca Lima, Alejandro Jara and Joost Pauwelyn. Graca Lima will serve as the chair. A dispute panel previously found that Colombia violated the AD agreement. It said Colombia's investigating authority failed to look at whether the use of third-country sales prices for calculating normal value was appropriate instead of domestic sales prices, among other things (see 2210110022).
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Simon Lester, president of China Trade Monitor and WorldTradeLaw.net, said in a blog post that while most of the issues are fairly basic antidumping issues, "an important system issue" could come up. Colombia argued the interpretation of the term "dumped imports" to include de minimis imports is a legal interpretation within the agreement's meaning.
"This legal standard is important for the level of deference WTO adjudicators show towards domestic anti-dumping authorities, an issue that has been of importance to many people in the U.S. in particular," Lester said. "I wondered if there was a possibility that the U.S. would use this case as an opportunity to push for a broad approach to what constitutes a 'permissible' interpretation." Lester added that the U.S. did not seem very sympathetic to Colombia's argument in its responses to questions from the panel, however.