I found a lot of interesting things in the WTO's World Trade Report 2009, released yesterday. Here are a few tidbits.
From page 51, questions about the problem of applying safeguards to services:
How could the notion of safeguards be extended to the movement of consumers, under mode 2, and to investment and labour flows under modes 3 and 4? For example, in the case of mode 3, who would be protected from whom? All domestically established service suppliers, regardless of nationality, would be protected from all new entrants? Or only domestically owned suppliers would be protected from new foreign entrants? In the latter case, how would established foreign companies be treated?
From page 65, an explanation of why firms dump:
Dumping is generally seen either as an exercise by foreign firms of monopoly power in international trade or as a response to changing demand coupled with an inability to adjust production capacity over the course of the business cycle.
What they have in mind here is explanations based on economic theories of dumping. As to why firms dump in the sense of anti-dumping laws, the answer may often be that the firms had no idea they were dumping.
From pages 68-69, whether anti-dumping duties trigger FDI:
Another complication is that foreign firms who are the subject of anti-dumping action may decide to “jump” the anti-dumping tariff by establishing a presence, through direct investment, in the importing country. There are some who argue that tariff-jumping FDI may be even more of a threat to domestic producers than dumped imports (Ellingsen and Warneryd, 1999). They argue that a high level of protection in the form of anti-dumping duties may be damaging to an import-competing industry as this would encourage inward FDI, which could be even less desirable to the domestic industry than import competition. A government that is unduly influenced by the domestic import-competing industry will consequently set the level of protection low enough to limit direct foreign entry.
I found this one particularly interesting. Do anti-dumping authorities really take this factor into account when setting the duty level?
From pages 84 and 101, the impact of subsidies and use of CVDs to deter them:
If the perfect market assumption is relaxed, situations may arise where a government subsidy improves national welfare. An efficient subsidy would correct a market failure, bringing social and private costs and benefits into alignment.
...
CVDs may deter subsidization altogether and thereby confer benefits to producers in the importing country who compete with subsidized goods in their export markets.
