On 14 March 2018, the delegation of Indonesia to the Chairperson of the Dispute Settlement Body circulated a communication pursuant to Article 6.2 of the DSU. The communication states that the Indonesian government requested consultations with the Australian government on 1 September 2017 with respect to Australia’s measures and determinations on the imposition of antidumping duties on A4 copy paper from Indonesia.
The anti-dumping measures in question was initially imposed on uncoated white paper - a type used for writing, printing or other graphic purposes, in the nominal basis weight range of 70 to 100 gsm and cut to sheets of metric size A4 (210mm x 297mm) (also commonly referred to as cut sheet paper, copy paper, office paper or laser paper) under HS code 4802.56.10 (statistical code 03) and 4802.56.10 (statistical code 09) exported from the Federative Republic of Brazil, the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Indonesia and the Kingdom of Thailand. Based on Anti-Dumping Notice (ADN) 2017/39, dumping margin for Indonesia ranges between12.6% - 45.1%.
On 25 September 207, the European Union communicated their request to join the consultations as an interested party to this issue seeing as the EU is a major producer and exporter of uncoated paper and an important export market for both Indonesia and Australia. Moreover, Indonesia and Australia held consultations on 31 October 2017in Geneva, Austria with the People's Republic of China, the European Union, and the United States as third parties, in attempt to reach a mutually acceptable resolution, however a resolution was failed to be achieved.
Indonesia views that the measures at hand are inconsistent to the Antidumping Agreement and GATT 1994 provisions in its application by Australia. This inconsistency, Indonesia views that Australia has failed to correctly construct the normal value of the Indonesia’s domestic producers’ goods. Indonesia lodged complaints against Australia pursuant to Articles 2.2, 2.2.1.1, 2.4, and 9.3 of the Anti-Dumping Agreement. Indonesia finds that Australia has incorrectly constructed the normal value of the copy paper on account of instead of using the Indonesian producers' domestic sales price based on the supposed existence of a particular market situation that allegedly distorted the raw material cost and thereby distorted the Indonesian producers' domestic sales price of A4 copy paper. Furthermore, Indonesia states that because of Australia's decision that a “particular market situation” existed is incorrect and inconsistent with Article 2.2 and resulted in Australia's use of constructed normal value for Indonesian producers of A4 copy paper, which is incorrect and inconsistent with Article 2.2.
Due to this fact, on 16 March 2018, Indonesia requested for the establishment of a panel to examine this matter.