China urges US to abide by WTO anti-dumping agreement (Channel News Asia, 2 December 2016)
When China joined the WTO in 2001, it agreed to let WTO members treat it as a non-market economy when assessing dumping duties for 15 years. That gave trade partners the advantage of using a third country’s prices to gauge whether China was selling its goods below market value. But that clause is due to expire on Dec. 11, and China has demanded that countries abide by the agreement. U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said in November the time was “not ripe” for the United States to change the way it evaluates whether China has achieved market economy status, and there was no international trade rules requiring changes in the way U.S. anti-dumping duties are calculated. Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang said the United States should stop using its own market economy evaluations to deny China’s “rights”.