. /.   WORLD TRADE  
ORGANIZATION  TN/RL/W/227 
31 March 2008 
 (08-1406) 
Negotiating Group on Rules Original:   English 
   
NEGLIGIBLE IMPORTS 
 
Communication from the Separate Customs Territory of 
 
Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu  
 
 
 The following communication, dated 27 March 2008, is being circulated at the request of the Delegation of the Separate Customs Territory  of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu.   
 
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  The Delegation of the Separate Customs Te rritory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu 
presents this document concerning the issue of  "Negligible Imports" under the Anti-Dumping 
Agreement (ADA).  This paper a ddresses the omission of the Rules Chair's text (TN/RL/W/213) on 
this issue as a contribution to the discussions in th is Group and to the overall balance of the Chair's 
text.  This is, therefore, without prejudice to the views we may have on other parts of the text.  We 
may reserve the right to modify or co-sponsor it with other Members at a later stage.   TN/RL/W/227 
Page 2  
 
  I. INTRODUCTION 
 We recall that during the discussion in the Negotiating Group in February 2008, many 
members expressed concerns at the failure of the Chair's text to include the proposals submitted by 
members on Negligible Imports.  We, therefore, reintroduce this issue to this Group for further 
discussion.   
 
II. DISCUSSION 
 As you are aware, the current threshold standa rd for Negligible Imports under Article 5.8 of 
the ADA is based on a comparison of the volume of dum ped imports with the total imports of the like 
product in the importing member.  We find this premise irrelevant to the actual market situation of the 
importing member.  The current standard ignores the ro le played by the dumped imports to the injury 
borne by the domestic industry producing the like pr oduct.  When deciding Negligible Imports, we 
think it is more meaningful to assess the effect of such imports to the overall domestic market 
situation of the like product in the importing member s.  The negligibility threshold should, therefore, 
be based on the ratio of imports from a particular country to the total consumption of the like product 
and the product under investigation in the importing country.   
 
 Article 5.8 currently leaves the decision of the period for measuring negligibility to the discretion of the authorities.  This allows the authorities to choose among imports in recent periods 
and to base the determination on those that ex ceed the negligibility threshold.  The following 
proposed amendment would help prevent such di scretion and provide a clear guidance for the 
authorities to decide such a period.  Furthermore, we think this period should be consistent with the 
period of investigation used by the authorities fo r dumping determination, because (a) negligibility is 
based on "dumped imports" from an exporting country  and (b) dumping can be determined only with 
regard to the period in which the authorities collect data on dumping.    
 Our proposed amendment, moreover, addresses a nother problem with the current negligibility 
test regarding cumulation.  We find that targe ting investigation at sources that only engage in 
negligible imports would exhaust administrative re sources rather than effectively protect domestic 
industry from being injured by negligible imports , since such imports have limited impact on 
domestic industry.  Moreover, in practice, applican ts tend to choose the largest sources of imports of 
the like product as the targets for dumping investigati on.  As a result, the cumulation clause is rarely 
used to include the imports that are negligible.  We , therefore, propose to eliminate this clause in the 
current text of the ADA.   
 III. PROPOSED TEXT 
Article 5.8:   
 
"... The volume of dumped imports shall nor mally be regarded as negligible if the 
volume of dumped imports from a particul ar country during the period of dumping 
investigation is found to account for less than 3 pe r cent of the domestic consumption 
imports  of the like product in the importing Member, unless countries which 
individually account for less than 3 per cent of imports of the like product in the  
importing Member, collectively account for more than 7 per cent of imports of the 
like product in the importing Member . 
 
 
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