Anti-dumping duty

What it means

Anti-dumping duty is an EU trade defence measure against goods that an exporter from a particular country sells in the Union below their normal price at home, harming European producers. The European Commission imposes it after an investigation, usually for five years with the option of extension.

It is paid on top of ordinary customs duty and its rate can be very high, often tens of percent of the customs value. It is frequently set separately for named producers, with the highest rate for all others, and sometimes as a fixed amount per tonne.

Countervailing duties against subsidised goods work in a similar way. The measure is tied to the commodity code and the country of origin, not the country the goods were shipped from, and it appears in the TARIC tariff directly under the code together with the producer’s additional code.

How it works in practice

It mainly affects steel and steel products, aluminium, ceramics, fasteners, solar panels, and bicycles and e-bikes from Asia. Before ordering a new product we therefore check the code and measures in TARIC, because anti-dumping duty can turn a good purchase into a loss-making one.

Duty and import VAT are calculated in sequence, with VAT charged on the customs value plus duty, so a high anti-dumping duty raises the VAT as well. A VAT payer can deduct that VAT, but the duty remains a cost and has to be built into the acquisition cost of the goods and into the costing.

To benefit from a lower rate for a specific producer, the importer must present a valid commercial invoice with the prescribed declaration. An error in the declaration, or an invoice from a trader instead of the producer, means the highest rate applies, so the customs representative also checks the documents before filing.

What to watch out for

Circumvention, such as transhipping goods through a third country or minor assembly, is actively investigated by the EU and the duty is extended to those routes. A customs debt can be assessed retrospectively for three years, longer in cases of fraud, and the importer pays it even if it did not know the true origin.

Origin is not decided by what the supplier says but by the non-preferential origin rules. Proof of preferential origin gives reduced duty under trade agreements and offers no protection against anti-dumping duty, so for high-risk goods we ask the supplier for evidence of where the goods were actually made.