It was early in the morning of October 5, 2015 when the trade ministers of twelve countries announced in Atlanta, Georgia, the successful conclusion of a seven-year, extremely complex negotiating effort known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The TPP was formally signed four months after its conclusion, on February 4, 2016, in Auckland, New Zealand, apparently heralding a new momentum for international trade and investment liberalization.

Concerns about what is characterised today as dumping are not new.1 Initial responses to dumping are found in the Brussels Sugar Convention of 19022 and Canada’s first national anti-dumping law in 1904.3 Other common law countries soon followed.4 The issue of dumping was discussed both at the League of Nations and during the 1933 World Economic Conference.5 During the 1946 post-war negotiations of the ITO Charter, the United States proposed an anti-dumping provision modelled on its own Anti-Dumping Act of 1921. There was general agreement among the negotiating parties on the need to address anti-dumping in the ITO Charter. Already at that time, the focus was on developing disciplines governing the use of anti-dumping laws instead of prohibiting dumping.