16th JUDICIAL CONFERENCE OF THE UNITED STATES COURT OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE: The Global Financial Crisis: Impact on International Trade and Matters Potentially Coming Before the United States Court of International Trade

I. Introduction and Overview After reaching a record level of $ 16.1 trillion in 2008, world merchandise trade experienced an unprecedented decline of 23% in 2009, falling to $ 12.1 trillion, reflecting the most severe decline in global trade flows since the Great Depression. 1 The 2.3% decline in world gross domestic product in 2009 marked the first decline in global economic output since the end of World War II. 2 Following this massive contraction, however, global merchandise trade is again growing in 2010, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) projected in September 2010 that the volume of world merchandise exports will grow by a robust 13.5% in 2010. 3 This Article will examine two issues relating to the recent shifts in global trade, as well as their interaction with the actions likely to come before (and implications for the jurisdiction of) the United States Court of International Trade (CIT). First, anecdotal evidence suggests that as demand has constricted in markets throughout the world, certain unscrupulous businesses that produce or export articles covered by antidumping or countervailing duty (AD/CVD) orders in the United States have sought to maintain their sales volumes by various schemes to avoid the application of the remedies provided by those orders at the U.S. border. Domestic producers in the United States have responded by pursuing an increased number of anticircumvention proceedings before the United States Department of Commerce (DOC), and legislation has recently been introduced in the United States Senate to define more ...