American Iron & Steel Institute joins United States Trade Representative's office in condemning the August 18th 2009 ruling by the WTO against zeroing, a US method of calculating antidumping duties.

As the USTR office pointed out, the WTO Appellate Body ruling goes beyond in scope anything agreed to by WTO members. The decades old practice of zeroing merely ensures that the so called negative margins on fairly traded merchandise in the United States are not improperly used to offset a foreign producer's dumping margins on merchandise sold at less than fair value.

The WTO ruling could be used to justify offsetting the margins on unfairly traded merchandise, enabling foreign produce to sell massive quantities of dumped products in the US market to the extreme detriment of US workers and businesses.

AISI said that "We urge the U.S. government and Members of Congress to reject this misguided decision and US negotiators to overturn it."

(Sourced from www.steel.org)