Introduction and summary of main legal issues

The 21.5 AB ruling in Mexico – Corn Syrup arises out of a dispute between the United States and Mexico concerning whether the Mexican agency's finding of material injury from dumping was consistent with the Anti-dumping Agreement. The original Panel found that the agency's determination of the existence of a threat of material injury to the domestic industry was made in violation of numerous provisions of the Anti-dumping Agreement. In light of these findings by the panel, the agency made a redetermination and the United States filed a 21.5 complaint, claiming that the redetermination failed to address adequately the defects identified by the original panel.

The 21.5 Panel agreed with the United States that an objective and unbiased agency could not infer the projected increase in imports asserted by the Mexican agency from the evidence on the record, and reached the same conclusion concerning the projections of the effects of these increases on the domestic industry. Here the issue was whether Mexico had analyzed various factors affecting demand for imports and the state of the domestic industry pursuant to Articles 3.4 and 3.7 of the Anti-dumping Agreement and whether the analysis, to the extent that it was done, would allow an objective and unbiased agency to come to the conclusion concerning threat of injury that the Mexican agency did come to.