Adored and Despised in Equal Measure: An Assessment of the EU’s Principle of Market Economy Treatment in Anti-Dumping Investigations Against China

Abstract

Compared to the scale of the volume of trade in general between the EU and China, EU anti-dumping duties should be only a minor irritant in the trading relationship between the two sides. In theory, only a small volume of imports from China are covered by EU anti-dumping measures. Yet, despite this situation, the issue of recognition of China as a market economy country as a whole, and specifically the application of MET in EU anti-dumping actions directed against it, raises passions that seem quite disproportionate. It is therefore useful to try to empirically assess what is the real economic impact of the EU’s anti-dumping approach towards China in light of the use of the conditional MET principle.