This study examines how US discretionary practices developed in the past decade have affected antidumping duty rates against exporters. Using the most recent data on dumping margin calculations, we find that the US Department of Commerce (DOC) has developed discretionary practices in a more nuanced manner to inflate dumping margins, which have primarily targeted market economy exporters. Our case studies document that practices known as targeted dumping and particular market situations appear to serve as trade protectionism for market economy exporters, especially those who could otherwise have received a negative determination without such practices. Furthermore, the DOC has brought an apparent change in its application of discretionary practices after the Trade Extension Preferences Act of 2015, leading to much higher dumping margins for the market economy. Along with empirical and case analyses, we further examine the World Trade Organization (WTO) jurisprudence concerning the extent to which the discretion of an investigating authority in anti-dumping proceedings can be condoned in the WTO.

本研究考察了美国在过去十年中发展起来的自由裁量做法如何影响对出口商的反倾销税率。使用关于倾销幅度计算的最新数据，我们发现美国商务部 (DOC) 以更细微的方式制定了酌情做法来提高倾销幅度，主要针对市场经济出口商。我们的案例研究表明，被称为定向倾销和特定市场情况的做法似乎是对市场经济出口商的贸易保护主义，特别是那些如果没有这种做法可能会受到负面裁决的出口商。此外，在 2015 年《贸易延伸优惠法案》之后，DOC 对酌情做法的适用产生了明显变化，导致市场经济的倾销幅度更高。除了实证和案例分析外，我们还进一步研究了世界贸易组织 (WTO) 关于反倾销程序中调查机构的自由裁量权在多大程度上可以在 WTO 中得到宽恕的判例。