In two cases involving tugs and catamarans, the action related to the purchase of a piece of capital equipment. The table below shows that Australia and EU countries have been the main targets of investigations. The provisions of the Dumping and Countervailing Duties Act relating to processes and injury apply equally to dumping and subsidy investigations, with some additional notification and consultation requirements in subsidy cases, as required by Article 13 of the WTO SCM Agreement. The 1994 amendments to the Act introduced a number of new or revised definitions relating to subsidies. The determination of whether there is a subsidy and the amount of the subsidy is made on the basis of the SCM Agreement and section 7 of the Act.
Information is required on the existence, amount and nature of the subsidy.
This information permits the Ministry to identify the subsidy programme concerned, to determine if there is a financial contribution by a government , and to gauge the extent to which it provides a benefit to the exported product. In investigating subsidies, information is sought from the government concerned as well as from exporters. Actions Countervailing duties may not exceed the amount of subsidy on the goods, and as in the case of dumping a lesser duty rule applies, the Minister is required to have regard to the desirability of ensuring that the amount of countervailing duty is not greater than is necessary to remedy the material injury. The New Zealand Court of Appeal has interpreted this to mean that no anti-dumping duty can be applied to deal with a situation of export subsidisation, which means that the price differentiation impact of an export subsidy must not be attributed to dumping when considering injury in a dumping case, and vice versa. The SCM Agreement sets out the conditions under which certain subsidies are non-actionable .