Numbing dumping

Do you by any chance have a recipe for ‘A Good, Easy Garlic Chicken’ and one for French fries? According to www.allrecipes.com, you simply sprinkle the chicken with garlic powder, onion powder and seasoning. They state that it is a great recipe for a quick and easy meal, even for the pickiest eater.

As for the French fries, or chips, www. recipetineats.com suggests that, for ten minutes, you gently simmer the chips in vinegar water. This is said to be a crispiness tip; you would not be able to taste vinegar. Once this is done, you need to shallow-fry the chips twice.

You might wonder why I have started with two recipes, when the title clearly suggests that this piece is about dumping. Well, there are antidumping duties imposed on three agricultural products – frozen chicken meat, garlic (both fresh and dried) and French fries – accounting for 30.14%, or 22, of the 73 antidumping duties. Half the chicken antidumping duties are targeted against the US, and the others against Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. The garlic antidumping duties are targeted against China. Ironically, the French fries antidumping duties are targeted against Belgium and the Netherlands.

With garlic, chicken and chips off the menu – unless you are going domestic – I might have whetted your appetite for knowing the products that are the subjects of the remaining antidumping duties. Let me just say that, if your diet is low in iron, you are in for a treat.

There are ten product groups to which the remaining 51 antidumping duties apply, and these are cement (5), chemicals (3), glass frit (1), plastics (8), plasterboard (2), glass (16), steel ropes and cables (7), steel sinks (2), garden tools (4) and wheelbarrows (3). To give the full count: chicken, 14; garlic, 2; and chips, 6.

To further subdivide the antidumping duties, you might want to consider how many residual antidumping duties are imposed. This simply means that the antidumping duty is imposed at a company level, and not only at a country level.

Thirty-nine, or 53.42%, of the antidumping duties are country specific, while 34, or 46.58%, are company specific. This means that, in more than half the cases, the companies do not tend to defend the antidumping investigations initiated against them. This is a very revealing statistic, which might well bring into question the staffing component of the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa, the organisation that conducts antidumping investigations, as company investigations tend to be a stretch on resources. Another issue is, of course, the age of the nonresidual antidumping duties. There seems to be a tendency for them to be ‘rolled over’.

Another interesting observation is that there are five products against which nonresidual antidumping duties are imposed, and these are garlic, glass frit, plastics, paperboard and garden tools. This simply means that the manufacturers or exporters do not participate in initiated antidumping investigations.

As for the adage that exhorts us to keep our friends close and our enemies closer, it would depend on who you consider to be South Africa’s friends. Starting with BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), the 26, or 35.62%, antidumping duties, or 29, or 39.73%, depending on whether you consider Taiwan to be a province of China, are broken down as follows: one on Brazil, none on Russia, seven on India, 18 on China and three on Taiwan.

Our African Growth and Opportunity Act ‘philanthropist’, the US, has ten antidumping duties imposed against its products. As for the European Union, South Africa’s trading partner in the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), it has 13 antidumping duties imposed against its products, while the UK, South Affrica’s trading partner in the other EPA, has six antidumping duties imposed against its products.

This means that 55, or 75.34% (or 58, or 79.45%) of all antidumping duties are imposed against countries with which South Africa has a formalised trade relationship.

An added concern, which I alluded to in the May 3 instalment of this column, titled ‘Calling a spade’, is that the age of antidumping duties should be considered. Could this be why the tariff book no longer indicates the date on which an antidumping duty was first imposed?