18 Feb 2008 04:53:24 | Sergey Talpa
The new law "Special Protective, Antidumping and Import
Compensatory Measures" differs from the old one by the fact that
it fully complies with the WTO (World Trade Organization)
standards. It is for the first time in the Russian practice that
a law describes in detail what is necessary to do in order to
protect the Russian market and how to do it. As its authors
promised, the Law has turned out to be extremely concrete: it is
conceived so that the officials as well as the participants of
trade agreements will be able to find straight answers to their
questions, and they should not search for any special
"explanations" and "commentaries".
The law provides a listing of basic concepts. Not everyone in
Russia, even among lawyers, will be able to tell straight off
what "dumping leverage" is, and what "dumping import" is. For
the majority of people it becomes a revelation, that "dumping"
is not the sale of foreign goods in Russia at lower prices than
similar local products cost (that's what for some reason most
people think) but the sale of a product cheaper, than local
production costs. A number of base concepts comprise such, as
"the material loss of an industry" (what to understand in
general under the term "damage") and "serious damage " (how to
calculate it), and in general a lot of other things, which are
clear "in general", but very artful when officials start to
build a state policy, based on the intuitive understanding of
such terms.
For example, the Law provides the description of the
investigation concept, which should precede the introduction of
all protective measures against "bad" foreign goods.
The Law states, that the body responsible for investigation, is
appointed by the decision of the Government of the Russian
Federation, and defines concrete timeframe, both for the
investigation, and for implementation of its results (the
measures, taken according to investigation results should be
approved by the Government not later than 14 days after they are
exposed). In case of a highly critical situation such measures
need to be introduced extremely rapidly, as the Government can
practically instantly introduce a special tax (protective import
tax) on the goods that cause damage to the economy. Should it be
found out later, that this tax is excessively heavy; the foreign
trade participants will have the right to be reimbursed for the
actual incurred losses. Such import tax cannot be effective for
more than 200 days.
The Law describes in detail how to establish the degree of
damage to the Russian economy from "bad" import. Special
protective measures have to be implemented in order to protect
the economy, the Law clearly defines, what those are and in what
case they should be used, for how long and what is the order of
their review. The main idea behind this is that such protective
measures should be lifted, as soon as they fulfill their
purpose. It is important not to go too far with those measures,
otherwise the market protection may cause more harm than good,
creating with the domestic manufacturer a sensation of absence
of competition, that the buyers will be the first ones to feel.
A separate chapter of the Law is dedicated to antidumping
measures. Discovering the fact of goods dumping in Russia,
calculating the damage and introducing protective measures -
each step is exposed in every detail, because this is a new
practice for this country. Here, as well as in the case of
application of special protective measures may be, the lawgiver
requires that the facts should be carefully investigated, as it
is possible that blind measures can do more harm than good. If
dumping influence does not exceed a certain allowable threshold,
strict measures should not be used. Moreover, if the supplier of
the goods states in writing that he followed a dishonest price
policy, and signs an obligation to stop it, the investigation is
then suspended, should the "inspectors" make the decision, that
the supplier can be trusted. However, tight control is carried
out to verify how he complies with the promise.
The Law introduces the concept of "compensatory measure" which
is necessary in case when the goods, produced with the subsidies
of the foreign governments are imported into Russia. In the
reality however, as it has been already noticed by the experts,
it is firstly the foodstuffs: the crisis of overproduction of
agrarian and industrial complex, the aspiration to support quiet
lifestyle of local farmers cause the foreign governments to buy
from manufacturers of agrarian and industrial complex the goods
at unfairly high prices, and then resell them for export at
lower prices, compensating the difference from the budget. The
demands of domestic manufacturers of agrarian and industrial
complex "to forbid" such imports was faced with fears, that the
sharp interdiction of imports will not cause the growth of own
production and will result only in shortages and price
increases. The Law has defined the "golden balance": the
investigation concerning the subsidized import is conducted
extremely objectively, abstracting from lobbyism of domestic
manufacturers.
The document is extremely transparent, as it could not be any
different. The attempts to declare a "trade war" to Russia when
its goods are exported to some countries, on one hand, as well
as obvious practice of "bad import" to our country from which we
were not protected, on another hand, have forced Russia to use
protective measures (on import of fowl, beef, pork) before the
adoption of this law. It caused an ambiguous and sometimes
extremely strong reaction in the outside world. The reaction of
Russia's supporters during the WTO negotiations was especially
painful. There was not a single country at this stage of joining
the WTO who dared strengthening its protective measures. Russia
has invested a great deal of efforts to prove, that it had the
right to protect the market, and has spent a lot of time to
explain to foreign experts, how its market was going to be
protected.
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