Should the US Commerce Department investigate currency subsidy claims?
The US Commerce Department began applying the US CVD law to Chinese products in 2007. Since that time, US industries have filed numerous petitions asking Commerce to include Chinese currency practices among the investigated subsidy programmes. Although the standard for initiating with respect to an individual subsidy programme alleged in a CVD petition is relatively low, Commerce has each time refused to investigate currency subsidies. In the first few China CVD cases, Commerce simply said, without detail, that the currency subsidy claims were inadequately pleaded. Yet the petitions did allege, with reasonably available supporting information, all the required elements: financial contribution (which exists any time a government and a company trade one thing for another, even currencies), benefit (the petitions adequately alleged, although one could not say that they fully proved, undervaluation), and specificity (more on this below). So Commerce was wrong, but there was no way to tell
