For many years, US anti-dumping rules have been criticised as being subjective and arbitrary. These characteristics of the US approach are considered to introduce a serious potential for abuse. Japan and the EU have identified US AD procedures as an issue for multilateral negotiation. Consequently, a new round of multilateral negotiations could see modifications to US rules to prevent their use by domestic producers to obstruct foreign competition. If so, there may be implications for future application to Chinese imports.

Chinese products have been one of the top targets of US anti-dumping actions, and this situation is unlikely to change once the PRC joins the WTO. It is curious that China did not secure a firm basis for its treatment under US AD rules as a non-market economy.

In a 1998 review of US anti-dumping cases involving China, the New Jersey based Dumont Institute for Public Policy Research noted that,

Where the alleged dumping has been done by companies in a nonmarket economy, the normal methodology is to choose a surrogate country's prices, perhaps with adjustment, as a substitute for the alleged offender's costs, in an effort to determine whether the foreign producer has sold products on the domestic market for less than cost. This faulty methodology invites abuse, and is compounded by the fact that the petitioners are often the ones that choose which country is to be used as a surrogate, and which data from the surrogate country are to be examined. This procedure is especially relevant to cases involving the People's Republic of China, since the Commerce Department has on many occasions classified the PRC as a nonmarket economy.

Should anti-dumping rules be put on the table in a new round, China will have secured a key opportunity to join with Japan and other critics of US rules to achieve a more transparent, objective and equitable basis for contesting charges of selling below cost. In this regard, it is to be expected that China will want to develop some clear provisions on the application of nonmarket economy methodology.