Context:

The Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) has published a notice, amending lists of developing and least-developed countries that are eligible for preferential treatment with respect to CVD investigations

Details:

 To harmonize U.S. law with the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (SCM) Agreement, the USTR had, in 1998, come up with lists of countries classified as per their level of development.
o These lists were used to determine whether they were potentially subject to U.S. countervailing duties.
 The 1998 rule is now “obsolete” as per the USTR notice.
 Countries not given special consideration have lower levels of protection against a CVD investigation.
 A CVD investigation must be terminated if the offending subsidy is de minimis (too small to warrant concern) or if import volumes are negligible.
o The de minimis thresholds and import volume allowance are more relaxed for developing and least-developed countries.

Criterion:

The USTR used the following criteria to determine whether a country was eligible for the 2% de minimis standard.
(1) Per capita Gross National Income or GNI
(2) Share of world trade
(3) Other factors such as Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) membership or application for membership, EU membership, and Group of Twenty (G20) membership.

Concerns:

 The U.S. government has changed an administrative rule, making it easier for it to impose countervailing duties (CVDs) on goods from India and certain other countries.
 The new lists consist of 36 developing countries and 44 least developed countries.
 India was, until February 2020, on the developing country list and therefore eligible for these more relaxed standards. It has now been taken off of that list.
 India, along with Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam were taken off the list since they each have at least a 0.5% share of the global trade, despite having less than $12, 375 GNI (the World Bank threshold separating high-income countries from others).
 India was taken off the list also because — like Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa — it is part of the G20.