The EU anti-dumping policy towards Russia and China: Product quality and the choice of an analogue country

Abstract: This paper uses the theory of international trade in vertically differentiated products in order to assess whether the EU has calculated disproportionately high dumping margins in its anti-dumping policy towards the two non-market economies (NMEs) Russia and China since 1992. Specifically, the investigation concerns cases in which the level of economic development in and the quality of the products from the chosen analogue country are higher than in the two NMEs. The conclusion drawn here is that, even when the EU chooses analogue countries at a higher level of economic development than Russia and China, the differences in product quality and in the levels of economic development between the dumpers and the analogue countries provide no systematic explanation of the size of dumping margins.