NAFTA Watch: Chp. 19 Panel Remands U.S. Antidumping Decision

The NAFTA Secretariat posted this decision on Friday remanding to the U.S. Department of Commerce a decision by Commerce to impose anti-dumping penalties on Oil Country Tubular Goods from Mexico. This decision is authorized by Chapter 19 of NAFTA, which authorizes the formation of Binational Arbitration Panels to review antidumping determinations made by domestic authorities (in this case, the U.S. Dept of Commerce).

Article 1904.1 of NAFTA requires each member state “to replace judicial review of final antidumping and countervailing duty determinations with binational panel review.” So, in a way, the Panel replaces judicial review of the U.S. government’s administrative decisions with an international tribunal. Similar NAFTA Panels under Chp. 11 have drawn criticism from the sovereigntist left (see also William Greider’s “expose” here) but not from the sovereigntist right.

(Having tweaked the ICJ’s slowness here, I should in all fairness point out that this Binational Panel was hardly a model of arbitral efficiency. The original claim was filed on April 6, 2001!)