A Reflection on Shortcomings of Iranian Provisions in Regard to Determination of Dumping in Comparison with WTO Anti-dumping Agreement

Marketing techniques and methods of eliminating commercial competitors have attracted considerable attention. One of these techniques is using predatory pricing by which the predator undertakings gain control over a great portion of the market and strike a probably heavy blow to the rivals abroad through supplying products with a lower price than home. In a broad classification, predatory pricing may occur domestically or internationally. The latter is known as dumping. The most important legal document in this regard in Iran is the “Regulation of Predicting Protective, Compensatory and Anti-Dumping Expedients and Measures for Protection of Domestic Producers” 1386 [2007].Since the mentioned Iranian provisions have not been analyzed by Iranian lawyers yet, the purpose of this study is the comparative review of this Regulation and the Anti-Dumping Agreement in order to discern the deficiencies of the Iranian Regulation in regard to determination of dumping. Therefore, the main and specific question of this paper is that what are the exact deficiencies of the aforementioned Regulation, as the most important legal document of Iran, in regard to determination of dumping and what is the solution? Thus, firstly, we will review the main elements of determination of dumping and after introduction of the key issues, the important deficiencies of the Iranian provision such as determination of the ordinary course of trade, concealment or untrustworthiness of the export price, comparison with regard to the price in the country of origin, simultaneous evaluation of the effects of importation from different countries, the prerequisites of investigation in regard to the quantity of the applicants and the price comparison criterion with respect to quantity of sales, will be illustrated and consequently, this paper shows that the current provisions of Iran concerning the determination of dumping face serious deficiencies, the elimination of which requires amending the aforementioned Regulation.