South Korea’s antidumping duties on Japanese valves are a violation of international trade rules, the World Trade Organization said in a Sept. 10 decision. The WTO ordered South Korea to change the duties on “pneumatic transmission” valves to bring them into “conformity” with WTO obligations. The decision upheld a previous ruling made by the WTO in 2018 that determined South Korea’s antidumping measures violate WTO rules.

Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with some of the top stories for Sept. 3-6 in case they were missed.

Vietnam continues efforts to crack down on the country of origin fraud and transshipment schemes that have become especially more frequent since the ramping up of U.S.-China trade tensions, according to reports in CustomsNews, the self-described “mouthpiece” of Vietnam Customs.

China, as a result of a Sept. 3 final ruling in its antidumping investigation, imposed duties on imports of phenol from the U.S., the European Union, North Korea, Japan and Thailand, China’s Ministry of Commerce said Sept. 4. China ruled that the dumping has “substantially damaged” its domestic industry. The duty rates range from 10.6% to 287.2%, and took effect Sept. 6 for a five-year period, China said.

The European Union published a notice Sept. 3 announcing changes to its safeguards on steel products meant to avoid double counting for goods also subject to antidumping and countervailing duties. For any goods subject to the three-year tariff-rate quotas on steel that become subject to the 25 percent out-of-quota rate, no AD/CV duties will be collected if the applicable total of AD and CV duty rates does not exceed 25 percent. AD/CV duties will only be collected if they exceed 25 percent total, and by the amount at which they exceed 25 percent, the notice says.

Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke's presidential campaign released a detailed trade agenda that talked about how he would undo some of what he called President Donald Trump's "disastrous trade war," and how he would advance trade liberalization, if he were elected.

A recent Canada Border Service Agency policy update on how it administers antidumping normal value reviews seems to mark a notable shift away from a prospective system of trade remedies, lawyers at Borden Ladner said in a recent blog post. The new policy, which was announced (see 1907190017) in a July 19 memo, reduces predictability about whether a sales price "will be sufficient to avoid duty liability when goods are imported into the Canadian market," the firm said. CBSA disagreed with the characterization and said the policies "were informed by consultation with industry, workers, and other stakeholders."

In the Aug. 29 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:

In the Aug. 27 edition of the Official Journal of the European Union the following trade-related notices were posted:

The Department of Finance Canada is deploying changes to antidumping regulations “to ensure that an appropriate level of anti-dumping duties can be applied to goods that are dumped into Canada,” it said in an Aug. 23 news release. “This will provide greater flexibility to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) to address situations where there may be distortions in the price of the goods in the country of export. It clarifies alternative methods to calculate the costs of production of the imported goods, in cases where the price of inputs is distorted because of purchases made between affiliated companies or because of a particular market situation.”