A while back, I said I would be trying to gather some evidence on the relative impact of appeals to NAFTA Chapter 19 vs. appeals to the U.S. Court of International Trade. Well, I finally have some data, but let me clarify in all caps that it is PRELIMINARY AND INCOMPLETE. But it's something, and I know people are interested, so here it is.
Some Cato colleagues and I looked at all ITC AD/CVD final injury determinations, in investigations and reviews, from 2007 to 2017. (We focused on the ITC rather than Commerce because the determinations are more straightforward (affirmative or negative), and we only went back to 2007 just to make the task more manageable and get some results quickly. We'll try to do more later.) Here's what we found.
In that period, there were 330 ITC determinations involving countries other than Canada and Mexico, and 33 determinations involving Canada/Mexico. (There was some overlap, as some determinations covered Canada/Mexico and other countries as well).
Of the 33 determinations involving Canada/Mexico, 3 were appealed to a NAFTA Chapter 19 panel and resulted in a ruling (3 others were appealed but the proceeding was terminated before a ruling).
Of the 330 cases involving other countries, 29 were appealed to the CIT.
In response to the NAFTA Chapter 19/CIT rulings in these appeals, the results were as follows.
For the NAFTA Chapter 19 cases, the panel found a violation in all 3 cases, and remanded to the ITC. In all of these cases, the ITC issued redeterminations that reached the same result. Two of these redeterminations were reviewed by the NAFTA Chapter 19 panel, and were sustained.
For the CIT cases, the court found no violation in 22 cases, and found a violation in 7. In the 7 cases remanded to the ITC, the ITC changed its ruling from affirmative to negative in one of these.
Let me repeat the caveat that this data is PRELIMINARY AND INCOMPLETE. We are still working on it, and please feel free to provide comments and suggestions.
