The countervailing duty (CVD) determination against China for subsidizing its paper industry points to the emergence of a new approach by the Bush administration. With the Democrats in control of Congress and political pressure from both sides of the aisle to “do something” in response to the ballooning trade deficit with China, the Bush administration... Read More

Update II: Judging from NewPage's testimony before Congress, the complaint was not a "direct attack on yuan undervaluation" as I characterize it below. NewPage claimed that the Chinese pulp and paper industry was benefiting from preferential government loans and preferential treatment from government-owned banks, and did not stake its claim on the broader issue of... Read More

The application of the CVD (countervailing duty) regime to China over the price of coated paper is a big thing. Anti-dumping penalties—the preferred mechanism in the past—made assumptions about Chinese costs and made the call that U.S. prices were below cost i.e. dumping. The countervailing duty regime is an assertion that Chinese prices are so... Read More