An Assessment of the WTO Compliance of the Recent Regulatory Regime of South Africa’s dumping and anti-dumping Law

This paper argues that while South Africa’s International Trade Amendment Bill and the attendant proposed regulations may generally be regarded as a positive legislative intervention, to a large extent, the new regulatory regime goes against the spirit, object and purport of the WTO anti-dumping agreement and is even in conflict with South Africa’s international Trade Administration Act itself. In order to substantiate the above reservations, this paper first outlines the basics of WTO dumping and anti-dumping law before proceeding to point out aspects of South Africa’s anti-dumping law and practice which incorporate WTO tenets. With the aid of selected WTO Jurisprudence and examples from comparative WTO member states, this paper also comments on selected impugned changes likely to be introduced by the bill and the new regulations and concludes that the proposed new law is unlikely to be WTO compliant.