Among the products hit by trade action are – Soft Ferrite Cores, certain thickness of vacuum insulated flask, aluminium foil, Trichloro Isocyanuric Acid, and Poly Vinyl Chloride Paste Resin – that were exported to India from China at below normal prices.

What are the anti-dumping duties?

• The provisional duty of up to USD 873 per tonne was imposed on aluminium foil for six months.
• Trichloro Isocyanuric Acid, used to treat water, was imposed a duty in the range of USD 276 per tonne to USD 986 per tonne.
• Soft Ferrite Cores (used in electric vehicles, chargers, and telecom devices), was slapped with up to 35 per cent duty its on CIF (cost, insurance freight) value.
• USD 1,732 per tonne anti-dumping duty was levied on vacuum insulated flask.
• Poly Vinyl Chloride Paste Resin imports from China, Korea RP, Malaysia, Norway, Taiwan and Thailand was imposed a duty of USD 89 to USD 707 per tonne.

What are anti-dumping duties?

Anti-dumping probes are conducted by countries to determine whether domestic industries have been hurt because of a surge in cheap imports.

The trade action was announced based on recommendation from the commerce ministry's investigation arm DGTR (directorate general of trade remedies). Probes are conducted periodically to check for the impact of cheap imports on domestic industries.

A product is considered to be dumped when a producer exports his product at a price lower than its value in its domestic market.

Do anti-dumping duties violate WTO rules?

Anti-dumping duties are imposed as per multilateral regime of Geneva-based World Trade Organization (WTO), which aims to ensure fair trading practices and a level-playing field for domestic producers vis-a-vis foreign producers and exporters.

Article 6 in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) allows countries to take action against dumping. The Anti-Dumping Agreement clarifies and expands Article 6, and the two operate together.

They allow countries to act in a way that would normally break the GATT principles of binding a tariff and not discriminating between trading partners — typically anti-dumping action means charging extra import duty on the particular product from the particular exporting country in order to bring its price closer to the “normal value” or to remove the injury to domestic industry in the importing country.

China is India's second largest trading partner. New Delhi has flagged serious concerns over the widening trade deficit with the neighbouring country, which stood at USD 85 billion in 2023-24.

(With PTI inputs)