The proposed tax plan has the potential to influence U.S. trade remedy investigations, which depend on the prices at which imported products are sold in the U.S. market and home market prices.  This blog examines how the BAT might affect one aspect of U.S. antidumping investigations: the calculation of dumping margins by the Department of Commerce

When a U.S. control number or “CONNUM” is the same as the comparison market CONNUM the USDOC determines the products to be identical. However, when the identical comparison market CONNUM was not sold, how does the USDOC’s SAS computer programming go about identifying the “most similar” comparison market match?

The former “Nails Test” method for identifying whether a company engaged in targeted dumping was wholly replaced by a two-staged test known as the Differential Pricing Analysis. Beginning in March, 2013 with the Xanthan Gum cases from China and Austria, the Department has applied this new methodology over 50 times with interesting results.

What appears simple on the surface is, in fact, not very simple at all. As a result, the road to understanding, let alone mastering, these calculations can be daunting.