Antidumping Duties in the Agriculture Sector: Trade Restricting or Trade Deflecting?

Abstract

In this article we analyze whether US antidumping (AD) duties in the agricultural sector are effective in restricting trade. More specifically, does imposing an antidumping duty restrict imports of the named commodity or are imports deflected from countries named in the AD petition to countries not named in the petition? We find that AD duties have significantly restricted imports of agricultural commodities from countries named in the petition. However, our results also indicate that, unlike the manufacturing sector in the US, there was little trade diversion towards countries not named in the petition. Our results indicate that AD is a plausible protectionist policy in the agriculture sector.