Abstract

This chapter covers commercial instruments in the shape of antidumping (AD), anti–subsidy and safeguard measures. These instruments are provided for under the GATT 1994 and give the WTO members willing to use them some degree of freedom (under some specified conditions) with respect to the trade concessions they undertook in GATT and WTO Rounds. ‘Commercial instruments’ is a reasonably neutral term. Politicians and lawyers often use the term ‘trade remedies’, which tends to imply that there is some failing or unfairness in the trading system. By contrast, economists usually call them ‘contingent protection’, which implies that they have been generally used to limit import competition. 1

We would like to thank very much K.A. Dickstein, M.K. Nevin and J. Suh for their excellent support.