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Gustav Brink
Journal of World Trade
Volume 59, Issue 2 (2025) pp. 257 – 282
httpss://doi.org/10.54648/trad2025018
Abstract
South Africa’s poultry
industry has been fighting a war on imports since 1999. The battles in this war
include the use of anti-dumping, significantly increased customs duties, SPS
measures in the form of full country-bans against outbreaks of highly
pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), and a free trade agreement safeguard measure
against imports from the European Union (EU). Anti-dumping duties against the
United States have been in place since 1999 and were recently extended to 2029,
while anti-dumping duties are also in place against imports from Brazil,
Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK. Customs
duties on whole birds have been increased from 27% to 82%, and for frozen
bone-in portions from 18% to 62%. Once there is an HPAI outbreak in a country,
all imports from that country are banned without the application of
regionalism, and the ban sometimes remains in place as long as two years after
the outbreak has been brought under control. South Africa also imposed a free
trade agreement safeguard for four years on poultry imported from the EU. All
of these measures have combined to make poultry one of the most protected
industries in South Africa.
Keywords
anti-dumping, SPS, HPAI, safeguards, customs duties, WTO, trade protection, trade remedies, poultry
Extract
Recent US statements calling for restoring a fully functioning World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement system by 2024 have triggered a wave of optimism that the US blockade of the dispute system may finally be coming to an end. Due to US opposition, the WTO dispute system has been crippled since 2019 and unable to enforce WTO obligations, leaving the WTO in a crisis.
These optimistic sentiments are misplaced. Despite its reassuring rhetoric, the United States has no intention of restoring the dispute system to its full powers. The Biden administration boasts that it has adopted a new and transformative modern American industrial policy based on hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies paid to the US semiconductor, electric vehicle, renewable energy, and other high technology industries. Key elements of this US industrial policy and US trade policies towards China violate US WTO obligations. A fully restored WTO dispute system will allow China, the European Union (EU) and other competitors to attack and overturn current US industrial and trade policies or subject the United States to massive financial penalties. To immunize US policies from attack, the United States wants and needs a WTO dispute system that remains disabled for the indefinite future, if not permanently.
Journal of World Trade