Global Antidumping Database, Chad P. Bown

The Global Antidumping Database website hosts newly collected, freely available, and detailed data on twenty-five (as of the completion of version 5.0) different national governments’ use of the antidumping (AD) trade policy instrument, as well as all WTO members’ use of safeguard (SG) measures, China-specific transitional safeguard (CSG) measures, and most of the global users of countervailing duties (CVD) through 2008. The information provided in this detailed data base will cover over 95% of the global use of these particular import-restricting trade remedy instruments.

The data collection project was initiated with seed funding by Brandeis University, and significantly expanded via funding from the Development Research Group of the World Bank, and and the Global Trade and Financial Architecture (GTFA) project initiative sponsored by the UK Department for International Development (DFID).

This data collection effort is the first attempt to use original source national government documentation to organize information on products (HS codes), firms, the investigative procedure and outcomes of the historical use (since the 1980s) of the antidumping policy instrument across most of the WTO system’s users. Data on SG investigations includes information on products (HS codes), the investigative procedure and outcomes including details on the structure of measures (including exempted countries) of the policy’s 1995-2008 use by all WTO members. We also report more and recent data on a number of smaller users of AD, and we also provide matching information to data on challenges to AD, SG and CVM via the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU).

History and Evolution

Version 1.0 of the Global Antidumping Database was made public in August 2005 with 16 user countries.

Version 2.0 (March 2006) the Global Antidumping Database added three new countries (China, Indonesia, Taiwan) with extensive data to bring the total to 19 countries. One additional country (Japan) with minimal data was also entered. Data corrections were provided for six other countries (Argentina, European Union, India, Mexico, Turkey, United States).

In Version 2.1 (September 2006), safeguard use data was entered for all WTO member countries for the 1995-2005 period and provided in a new set of spreadsheets. For each of the 19 AD-using countries for which we have detailed data, data on revocation dates and years were added or verified/added. This data was taken from bi-annual reports from the WTO’s Committee on Anti-dumping Practices under Article 16.4 of the Agreement. Detailed data linking challenged to specific AD, SG and CVM measures via formal WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) trade disputes has been added via a new set of spreadsheets. These can then be matched to extensive DSU data found in Henrik Horn and Petros Mavroidis’s WTO Dispute Settlement Database, also funded by the World Bank.

In Version 3.0 (June 2007), we added a handful of new variables to each AD-CTY-Master spreadsheet describing the WTO-reported outcomes to the AD investigations. This is designed for researchers to be able to check against what governments report in their national publications which is captured in other variables in the database – i.e., to verify consistency or to replace missing (unreported) outcomes.

In Version 5.0 beta (June 2009), Version 5.0 (July 2009), and Version 5.1 (October 2009), we added a number of new countries for our detailed reporting of antidumping and countervailing duties, and we introduced coverage of a new policy instrument – the China-specific transitional safeguard policy. Detailed raw data became available for twenty-five antidumping-using countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, EU, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, USA, and Venezuela). According to data from the WTO, for all member economies that still “control” use of their own trade policies in 2009 – i.e., subtracting out newly acceded member states to the EC that used AD prior to their EC accession - these 25 Members initiated 93% all antidumping investigations by the WTO membership during 1995-2008, and include 23 of the 25 most frequent users. (Missing from the top 25 are #14 Egypt and #20 Israel). We also have detailed data for twelve countervailing duty-using countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, European Union, India, Mexico, Turkey, United States), in addition to all global safeguards and China-specific safeguards notifications that have made been to the WTO. In the midst of the global economic crisis, beginning in March 2009, we provided quarterly monitoring reports on the use of these trade policies around the world over time.

In Versions 6.0 (March 2010), we extended data coverage through the end of 2009.

The Future

The Global Antidumping Database is a public good. Errors or omissions should be notified to Chad P. Bown (cbown@worldbank.org) so that the database can be corrected and improved on a continual basis.