How New Zealand’s Trade Remedies System Responded to the Covid-19 Pandemic

When the Covid-19 pandemic struck in early 2020, it spread quickly and wreaked havoc globally. Countries were forced to develop solutions and adopt practices to deal with the fallout, in many cases where there was no existing playbook to rely on. New Zealand was not immune. As global production and trade slowed, its geographically isolation meant it became difficult to get goods to market. At the time, New Zealand was about to impose anti-dumping duties on steel imports from South Korea to address the harm to its domestic industry resulting from the dumped imports. It became obvious that the duties would be counterproductive, at least while the pandemic was prevalent, and a solution was needed to deal with the impact of the pandemic on New Zealand’s steel market. New Zealand had experienced a devastating earthquake several years prior to the pandemic and had adopted legislation to provide for the suspension of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties in the case of a natural disaster or emergency. It enacted this provision on imports of steel from South Korea. A comparison with the European Union’s suspension provisions leads to the conclusion that countries should adopt powers in their legislation to suspend, or defer for a period of time, the imposition of trade remedies under certain, defined circumstances. Those circumstances might range from an improvement in the economic conditions since the investigation was started through to the justification of the duties being materially affected by an unusual or extreme event.