In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Brian Deese, the former director of the National Economic Council in the Biden administration, calls for a coordinated use of AD/CVDs as a way to "discourage" China's "anti-market behavior":
Responding to China’s anti-market behavior strongly enough to discourage it — and yet not so strongly as to inadvertently replicate it — is challenging but essential to the well-being of our economy and that of our peers.
The right approach is for the United States to build an international coalition to send a clear message to China that its current policy choices are neither acceptable nor sustainable. Other countries are moving in this direction. In recent months, Brazil has launched several investigations into the alleged dumping of Chinese industrial products. Vietnam, Thailand, South Africa and Mexico have each taken steps to protect domestic industries from Chinese exports. The European Union has undertaken an anti-dumping investigation into Chinese EVs. And India already has more anti-dumping orders than any other country.
A global coalition could start with harmonized tariffs targeting Chinese exports.
These tariffs should focus on areas such as steel, where manufacturing capacity is already projected to meet global demand, and clean energy components, where China’s strategy to dominate the market is evident and the economic and planetary costs of concentration are especially acute. ...
I have previously expressed skepticism about the use of CVDs to induce changes to other countries' subsidy policies. My sense is that, generally speaking, when countries are the target of CVDs (or AD measures), they see these measures as biased and protectionist, and are unlikely to change their behavior in response. I suppose you could argue that Deese's proposed coordination among a number of countries could change how targeted governments see things, but I still have doubts. Governments don't like to be bullied (and China particularly doesn't like it), so this will probably not induce the changes people are hoping for.
It's worth noting here that there have been extensive AD/CV duties in place on Chinese steel and other products for a long time, and they don't seem to have had much impact on Chinese policies. As the Commerce Department described it a few years ago in relation to steel, "[a]s of April 19, 2017, Commerce has 152 antidumping (AD) and countervailing duty (CVD) orders in place on steel from 32 countries," and "[t]wenty-eight of the 152 orders (18%) are on steel products from China – 16 AD and 12 CVD." Importantly for Deese's international coalition argument, this long-standing use of AD/CVD against China is not unique to the United States. Deese highlights Brazil's new investigations, but Brazil's most recent report to the WTO on its anti-dumping practices shows that it has been using anti-dumping measures against China for a while now (see the Annex at the end).
Fortunately, there is an alternative to AD/CVD: complaints filed at the WTO, against either subsidies or broader non-market practices. What you get with WTO complaints is an objective international ruling that often leads to some degree of compliance by the responding party. It's not perfect, but it seems like the best option that exists for discouraging Chinese subsidies and protectionist/non-market practices.
(Just to state the obvious, WTO dispute settlement is not an option for the U.S. right now because it has blocked Appellate Body appointments, but (1) the U.S. could change course here and (2) other countries have signed on to the MPIA and could therefore use WTO dispute settlement to file complaints of this sort against China).
