Anti-Dumping and Anti-Trust Issues in Free Trade Areas

This book is concerned with the regulation of business activity within free trade areas and in particular with the law of economics of dumping and other anti-competitive practices. The author considers the legitimacy of anti-dumping measures in free trade areas in the light of the recent NAFTA agreement, positing that, within a free trade area, anti-dumping laws are inappropriate mechanisms for dealing with imported products that may be harmful to the interests of the importing state. She goes on to propose that the application of competition law may be a better way to tackle this problem, asserting that the competition laws of a state might be particularly effective if applied extraterritorially. Recent developments in the concept of positive comity may be of major significance in this respect. Using the NAFTA Agreement as her principal example the author demonstrates that free trade areas exhibit major differences from one another, not only in the strength and nature of their economies but also in their rules on dumping and competition.