ITA opens up access to documents shedding light on trade remedy proceedings
We’re always interested in new sources of information about trade, so we’re happy to report that the US International Trade Administration’s Import Administration (IA) has implemented the second phase in its roll-out of ACCESS – that’s the Antidumping/Countervailing duty Centralized Electronic Service System, designed to make the public and proprietary documents filed in the course of AD/CVD proceedings generally available in electronic form online.
IA ACCESS was launched last August, with Release 1, requiring all parties to submit electronically documents for the record in AD/CVD proceedings.
Now, with Release 2, just announced, the public versions of these documents are available to anyone who registers here.
These documents allow you to follow the arguments made and evidence presented in trade remedy litigation – for example, how it was determined that Chinese exporters dumped solar panels on the US market.
If you browse the documents, you’ll find that they are tagged by case number. There is a full-text search that will help you locate documents pertinent to the case you’re interested in, and so identify the case number (A-570-979 for the Chinese solar antidumping investigation).
You’ll also find that the public documents are redacted, scrubbed of confidential and competitively sensitive business information (such as specific numbers of companies active in the market, for instance, sales volumes, market share percentages, production figures, profits, etc.). This information is locked up in the proprietary versions of the documents and will remain off-limits. Next year’s Release 3 of IA ACCESS will, however, enable authorized applicants to access proprietary documents online.