The zeroing litigation seems to be winding down (albeit very slowly), but the zeroing negotiations may be heating up. From Reuters:
Congress is likely to reject a world trade agreement unless it restores eroded U.S. ability to impose duties on unfairly traded imports, a pair of senior Democratic lawmakers said on Thursday.
"The starting point must be to restore the balance that was struck in the Uruguay Round, more than 10 years ago," House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel and House trade subcommittee Chairman Sander Levin said in a letter to Bush administration officials.
The lawmakers would play a key role in congressional approval of any world trade agreement. Like many in Congress, they believe a series of World Trade Organization panel rulings against the way the United States calculates anti-dumping duties go beyond what countries agreed to do in the 1994 Uruguay Round trade deal.
They want any new agreement to clarify the United States' right to use a long-standing procedure known as "zeroing," which was struck down by a WTO panel.
"It is hard to imagine Congress approving any final package that fails to include this essential clarification," Rangel and Levin said.
Here is the full text of the House letter, which also mentions other trade remedy issues and expresses concern with judicial "overreaching" more generally.
