An Annotated Explanation of Articles 1 and 2 of the WTO Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures

摘要

By chance, I served as head of Import Administration at the US Department of Commerce from 1981 to 1983. Until 1980, the Treasury Department was responsible for administration of US countervailing duty cases, and after World War Ⅱ Treasury decided it would not countervail any subsidies except for export subsidies. Most export subsidies that Treasury countervailed did not present difficult methodological issues: If Mexico, for example, gave a 10% bonus on the value of exports (the so-called CEDI), then it was quite simple to determine that there was a subsidy and that the value was 10%. No other country in the world used countervailing duties at that point, so as a result there had been very little thinking or work on the valuation of subsidies.