China used anti-dumping rules against us because what goes around comes around

Ludomił Sawicki/Unsplash, CC BY

Simon Lacey, University of Adelaide

Australia has acted with dismay to China’s decision to impose punitive mostly “anti-dumping” tariffs of 80.5% on imports of Australian barley.

The culmination of an 18-month investigation, China’s move threatens to wipe out Australian barley exports to China, worth A$600 million in 2019, unless China withdraws the measure either unilaterally or following a successful challenge at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

However poorly justified, there are precedents for what China has done, many of them from Australia.

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Australian anti-dumping and countervailing measures by country, March 2020

Anti-Dumping Commission, March 31, 2020

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Australia was among the first wave of countries to adopt anti-dumping legislation alongside Canada, New Zealand, the United States and Britain in the early years of the 20th Century.

It remains a prolific user of the system compared to other countries, with an outsized number of measures imposed against imports from one country, China, and imports of one product, steel.

What are anti-dumping measures?

One way to think about anti-dumping measures is the international equivalent of domestic measures intended to combat predatory pricing.

Guidance from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says that while it is usually okay to sell goods at a below-cost price, “it may be illegal if it is done for the purpose of eliminating or substantially damaging a competitor”.

But in the case of international anti-dumping measures, there is no need to prove purpose.

It suffices that an investigation finds the imported goods were sold below their corresponding price in the home market and that this caused or threatened to cause harm to a domestic industry producing the same sort of goods (known as “like products”).

Chinese steel, glass, cables and A4 copy paper

Technically, Australia imposes two types of measures: “anti-dumping measures”, which are additional duties on so-called dumped imports which are held to have injured Australian industry, and “countervailing measures” which are additional duties on subsidised imports that have injured Australian industry.

They are currently in place or proposed against Chinese wind towers, glass, electric cables, chemicals, herbicides, A4 copy paper and aluminium products, as well as steel.

In theory, WTO rules only allows anti-dumping measures for limited periods (China’s measures on barley have been imposed for five years) but in practice, once in place these measures can be difficult to remove.

They shield us from cut-throat competition

In the broader context of Australia’s relationship with China, they play an important role, shielding Australian import-competing industries from the full and potentially crushing impact of free trade with China.

One aspect of their use that has been particularly galling to Chinese officials is Australia’s failure to follow through on a commitment it made during the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement negotiations to treat China as a market economy for the purpose of anti-dumping investigations.

The concession was seen as highly significant by China and would have made it harder for Australia to conclude that some goods were not being sold at fair prices.

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Read more:
Barley is not a random choice – here’s the real reason China is taking on Australia over dumping

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Australia’s continued use of anti-dumping measures has come under repeated criticism from the Productivity Commission, almost entirely on the basis of economic efficiency arguments.

However, these criticisms ignore a number of important concerns, including the need to keep these measures so they can be used to hit back against other countries that use them. It would make little sense to remove them until other big users agreed to do the same.

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Read more:
It’s time to drop Australia’s protectionist anti-dumping rules

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Another important consideration, which has received greater attention during the current coronavirus crisis, is the need for – systemic resilience. If Australia becomes totally reliant on other countries for (say) steel, it’ll have less ability to get it when it is needed.

Before asking ourselves whether we are prepared to liberalise or do away with our current anti-dumping regime, we need to be able to answer the very important question of whether we are equally prepared to do away with our domestic steel, aluminium, paper and other industries.

I suspect that the answer to this question is no.

There are of course other ways to reinforce these industries or shield them from import competition, but it is more than likely that none would be as effective as the current system of anti-dumping duties. We have kept them because we still have some use for them.

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Read more:
China might well refuse to take our barley, and there would be little we could do

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Simon Lacey, Senior Lecturer in International Trade, University of Adelaide

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Shorten’s plan to triple anti-dumping penalties misunderstands the law

Weihuan Zhou, UNSW

Bill Shorten’s proposal to triple anti-dumping penalties demonstrates a misunderstanding of dumping and its impact on the economy. It also misunderstands when anti-dumping measures may be lawfully applied and to what extent.

Shorten’s proposal is purportedly to prevent Australia from becoming a “dumping ground for cheap foreign goods sent here by trade cheats”. The Opposition Leader says Labor is a strong believer in trade, but it should be conducted on a “level playing field”. He also wants to give the Anti-Dumping Commission 30 new staff and new responsibilities.

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Read more:
Australia may be engaging in ‘free trade’ but it’s becoming more protectionist too

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There are no existing penalties in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) anti-dumping regime, or in Australia’s anti-dumping regime – that would be in breach of WTO rules. Australia’s current regime involves the use of anti-dumping measures to counteract injury caused by dumped imports to domestic industries. These typically take the form of import tariffs.

Anti-dumping measures like duties are not “penalties” as such, but simply taxes in the form of a customs duty to remove the injury caused by dumping.

In recent years, the use of anti-dumping measures has been on the rise predominantly to protect the steel industry in Australia.

Current dumping rules

“Dumping” is when an exporter exports goods to another country at an export price less than what it sells the same like goods in its own country. Under WTO rules, this is neither illegal nor unlawful.

It is a perfectly legitimate commercial practice. In fact, in 2016 the Productivity Commission found there was no compelling economic rationale for a country like Australia to act against dumping.

Rather than prohibiting the practice of dumping, WTO anti-dumping rules only provide a remedy where the dumping causes material injury to a domestic industry in the country of import, for example reduced revenues and profits. The remedy is the imposition of dumping duties, or customs duties.

This should be equal to or less than the margin of dumping – the extent to which an exporter’s export price is lower than its home market price.

It’s not clear how the “triple penalties” proposed by Shorten could be imposed in line with the WTO rules.

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Read more:
It’s time to drop Australia’s protectionist anti-dumping rules

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Increasing penalties could hurt the economy

Mr Shorten’s anti-dumping penalties would have several effects – including to increase prices of imported goods and inputs for Australian produced goods. This price rise would be passed on to Australian companies and consumers. For example, this would increase the cost of steel for construction industries.

Shorten’s policy would benefit a small group of import-competing industries, such as those producing steel and A4 copy paper, including companies that are wholly owned by foreign companies. But such policy completely ignores the interest of Australian manufacturers using imported materials, their employees or consumers.

Increased dumping penalties could also stifle competition, increasing prices. This could also increase unemployment, as the imposition of the penalties would make the cost of business uneconomical.

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Read more:
Consumers lose out to Australia’s protectionist anti-dumping laws

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Shorten’s policy on dumping seems misguided and ill-informed and can only operate to Australia’s detriment. These observations are consistent with the findings of the Productivity Commission that Australia’s anti-dumping system has become increasingly more protectionist and damaging.

In the interests of fair trade, similar penalties would need to apply to Australian companies engaged in dumping, and to both export and domestic sales to ensure a “level playing field”.

More fundamentally, as the Productivity Commission has observed, “fairness” does not provide a justification for anti-dumping measures which fail to consider the impact of such measures on the community as a whole.

What’s more, Shorten’s “triple penalty” could drag Australia into the ongoing trade conflict and harm Australian consumers and industries using imports from China. If the “triple penalty” provokes China’s retaliation, that will hurt Australian goods and services exporters.

This article was co-authored by Andrew Percival, Principal at Percival Legal.

Weihuan Zhou, Senior Lecturer and member of China International Business and Economic Law (CIBEL) Initiative, Faculty of Law, UNSW Sydney, UNSW

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Pakistani Islamists Keep Two Newlywed Couples from Home

Armed Muslims upset that Christians complained to police of false ‘blasphemy’ charge.

KARACHI, Pakistan, May 27 (CDN) — Islamists armed with pistols and rifles waited for two Christian couples to return to their rented home this week, seeking to kill them after the newlyweds complained to police that the radical Muslims had falsely accused them of desecrating the Quran, according to a local Christian legislator.

Christians Atiq Joseph and Qaiser William and their wives, who requested anonymity, went to an undisclosed location after Christians in Gulshan-e-Iqbal town, Karachi, warned them that the armed Muslims were stationed in front of their joint home on Friday (May 21), said Saleem Khurshid Khokhar, a representative of Sindh in the Punjab Provincial Assembly.

“These 10 unidentified, armed Muslim men were still patrolling in front of the houses of Atiq Joseph and Qaiser William, waiting for them to return and shoot them to death,” Khokhar told Compass earlier this week.

The Christians were returning from having tried to file a complaint against the Islamists at Peer Ilahi Bakhsh police station of Gulshan-e-Iqbal town – where Muslim police responded by shouting angry obscenities at the couples and began secretly planning to charge them under Pakistan’s widely condemned “blasphemy” laws, Khokhar said. Both couples were wed on April 2.

Earlier that day (May 21), about 20 Muslim extremists had threatened to kill the Christian couples after accusing them of desecrating the Quran, the legislator said. Having just moved into the joint home in a predominantly Christian slum, the previous day the couples had gathered a large pile of garbage after cleaning up debris, including pieces of old newspapers, left by the previous tenants.

On Friday (May 21), after Joseph and William had left for work, their wives threw the debris onto the pile of garbage, Khokhar said. An area resident, Bashir Pervezi, told Compass that a door of their home was open and anyone passing by could see the women at their household work.

“I was standing in front of the new Christian tenants’ house while 20 bearded, armed Muslim men arrived and started searching for something in the garbage,” Pervezi said. “After about 35 minutes of searching, they started shouting at the women and hurling threats of dire consequences, threats of killing family members for desecrating the holy pages of Quran and Hadith [words and deeds of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad] by dumping them onto waste.”   

The two housewives went out and read every scrap of paper, said Pervezi, but they found no pages of the Quran or the Hadith, said both Pervezi and Khokhar. 

The women did their best to reason with the armed Muslims, who only continued to insist that the new Christian tenants had desecrated the pages of the Quran and the Hadith, Khokhar said.

“The armed Muslim men who had arrived from an unknown place terrorized both Christian women by threatening that they should prepare to face death for desecration of the pages of the holy Quran and the holy Hadith,” Khokhar said.

Local Christian residents told Khokhar as well as Compass that they found no pages or excerpts of Quranic verses or of the Hadith. The area Christians confirmed Khokhar’s assertion that the armed Muslims went away hurling threats. The women immediately informed their husbands of the confrontation.

Joseph and William consulted with local residents and decided to go to the police station for justice and protection. When they and their wives submitted an application to register a case against the 20 Islamic extremists for threatening them and leveling false allegations of desecrating the Quran and Hadith, the station house officer (SHO) and other Muslim police officers became furious, the couples told Compass.

Police began to shout obscenities at them, they said. A sympathetic police officer aware of their innocence notified them that the SHO was secretly planning to register a First Information Report against them under Article 295-A of the blasphemy law – hurting religious feelings, which can bring life in prison – and would put them in jail, Khokhar said. The officer told them to hurry away. 

As the couples made their way home, Christian residents warned them that 10 Muslims armed with pistols, Kalashnikovs and long-range rifles were waiting for them and kept them from returning home, Khokhar said.

The two couples went to an undisclosed location to avoid danger.

The SHO at the Peer Ilahi Bakhsh police station was unavailable for comment; after Compass made repeated requests to speak with him, a police station registrar said that the SHO could not comment because he was ill in the hospital.

Khokhar called on the government to immediately repeal all discriminatory laws, including the controversial blasphemy laws – 295-A for injuring religious feelings, 295-B for defiling the Quran and 295-C for blaspheming Muhammad – as they have often been misused by fanatical Muslims against Christians.

Maximum punishment for violation of Section 295-A, as well as for Section 295-B (defiling the Quran), is life imprisonment; for violating Section 295-C the maximum punishment is death, though life imprisonment is also possible.

Report from Compass Direct News 

AUSTRALIA: BUSHFIRES AND FLOODS

Australia is a land of extremes. We have bushfires still burning out of control in Victoria and floods across the country in Queensland, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, South Australia and now in Western Australia as well. Somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of Australia is flood affected, while something like 50 percent of the country is still stricken by drought. Some areas have now been in drought for 11 or 12 years.

Flood waters are now beginning to recede across most of the country; however there is still plenty of rain about – especially in Queensland where an active monsoonal trough is still dumping rain on Queensland.

In Queensland authorities have captured the crocodile that took a 5 year old boy in flood waters. The boy’s remains were found inside of the crocodile. The crocodile is not going to be released back into the wild and will probably be sent to a crocodile farm.

The death toll in Victoria’s bushfire disaster now stands at 209, including a fire-fighter who was killed by a falling tree damaged by the fires. The fire-fighter was from interstate and had gone to Victoria to assist in the crisis. He was due to go home the next day.

The police have stated that the death toll is no longer expected to climb much further than 209.

The official damage bill for in the bushfire areas of Victoria is fast approaching $1 billion Australian dollars and is expected to go beyond that.

Police have now arrested a woman who claimed her father was killed in the bushfires after it was discovered she was not related to the man she claimed was her father. The woman was trying to obtain $10 000 in bushfire relief money.

BELOW: Dramatic video footage as a bushfire approaches a house at Anglesea in the early hours of the morning of the 14^th February 2009.

INDIA: PRAYER TEAM BEATEN MERCILESSLY – THEN ARRESTED

Two Christians in Chhattisgarh forced to beat fellow believer unconscious under threat of death.

NEW DELHI, October 13 (Compass Direct News) – The Christian community of Chhattisgarh state is rattled after a gruesome mob attack and torture in Surguja district.

At midnight on Oct. 3 in Dumarbhavna village, 110 kilometers (68 miles) from Premnagar, three jeeps full of Hindu nationalists broke open the door of a house where a three-day prayer meeting was taking place and attacked participants as they slept – ultimately forcing two Christians to beat one of their own prayer partners unconscious under threat of death.

The mob from the Hindu extremist Dharma Sena (Religious Army) beat the participants in the prayer meeting, including women, and dragged three of them from the house of Parmeshwar Beik, dumping them into the jeeps.

“We thought that they were taken to the police station, but instead they were taken to a secluded place where they were beaten all night,” Yahoshu Kujur, pastor of Blessing Church of God, told Compass.

Muneshwar Ekka and Beik were beaten first, and then the Hindu nationalists ordered them to beat the third captured Christian, Ravi Devangan.

“They threatened to kill us if we did not beat Ravi,” Beik told Pastor Kujur. “We were so scared and left with no option, so we beat Ravi until he dropped unconscious.”

After failing to find the three Christians at the local police station the next morning, the pastor found them at the Srinagar Government Hospital, where Devangan was admitted with internal injuries and injuries to his chest, legs and other parts of the body.

“Ravi, who is a driver by profession, was just visiting Parmeshwar from Mehagai village,” Pastor Kujur said. “He was the worst hit, at home and outside during the attack.”

He added that Devangan’s wife witnessed the attack on the house.

 

Police Inaction

Pastor Kujur told Compass that police admitted all three kidnapped Christians to the Srinagar Government Hospital with Devangan in serious condition and the other two in shock.

Beik’s wife also sustained internal injuries during the attack, Pastor Kujur said.

“Mr. Ashok Sahu and four other local Christian leaders went on the morning of Oct. 4 and reported the matter at the police station, but so far no action has been taken,” the pastor said.

Police reportedly deceived local Christians into believing that no complaint would be filed against the prayer team members for “forced conversion” if they would agree not to file any complaints against the Hindu nationalists.

“They told us that they would set the three free if we did that,” Pastor Kujur told Compass.

Instead police registered a case of “forced conversion” against the three Christians under sections 3 and 4 of the Chhattisgarh Dharma Swantantraya Adhiniyam (Chhattisgarh Freedom of Religion Bill).

If convicted, the Christians could be sentenced up to a year in prison and/or pay a fine of up to 5,000 rupees (US$100). They appeared in Surajpur local court on Oct. 6. A fourth Christian, Fakir Chand Toppo, was also falsely implicated, Pastor Kujur said.

At press time all four Christians were in Surajpur jail, though attempts to secure bail for them continued.

 

Political Influence

Pastor Kujur said police officers who are friends of his informed him that police were forced to prosecute the Christians on “orders from above.”

Internal police sources told him, he added, that police in the state were working against Christians under Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) pressure that has the support of the Chief Minister Raman Singh.

Christians from Surajpur have received news from sources who wish to remain anonymous that, emboldened by the BJP government that rules the state, Hindu nationalists have announced a cash award of 100,000 rupees (US$2,092) to anyone who murders a Christian preacher.

In Premnagar, also in Surguja district, Hindu extremist mobs have mounted similar attacks, Pastor Kujur said. He told Compass that in 2004 a Christian convention was attacked during which a mob surrounded the venue and shouted anti-Christian slogans. Police intervention averted casualties.

In another incident in 2005, Hindu extremists incited villagers of Premnagar to attack local Christians, reportedly wounding many.

The Dharma Sena was relatively unknown until nearly three years ago, emerging suddenly in the central Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

Attacking Christians throughout the two states, the Hindus extremist group is reportedly backed heavily by the BJP, with BJP leaders pressuring police officials not to register any First Information Reports against it.

It is widely believed that the Dharma Sena is nothing more than the Hindu extremist youth group Bajrang Dal in another form.

Report from Compass Direct News