Arquivamento de investigação antidumping e resultados colusivos: o caso da economia brasileira

Abstract

This study addresses the trade protection apparatus by analyzing the Antidumping (AD) mechanism. This investigation consists of verifying the inappropriate application of the AD mechanism by national companies in the domestic territory against foreign companies. The possibility of improper use of the AD procedure arises when, during the process of opening an AD investigation petition, the Brazilian firm (applicant) requests the prerogative of archiving the investigations without any justification. This advantage serves as an instrument to force the firm from the foreign country (respondent) to artificially combine price and quantity in order to obtain anticompetitive profits. Thus, the objective of this thesis is to verify the hypothesis regarding the creation of an illegal agreement (collusion and/or cartel) between the parties involved in the AD process. To this end, from an empirical point of view, a preliminary investigation of all AD investigation processes in the Brazilian economy for the period 1988 to 2022 was initially carried out in order to identify cases of opening and closing of investigations followed by archiving at the request of the Brazilian petitioner. Thus, the textile sector was identified—a polyurethane laminated group with textile material on one side—which will be the object of investigation of this thesis. The ARDL trend and cointegration models detected anticompetitive results with suspected cartel/collusion in the national textile sector. The products Laminated Sheets and Synthetic False Materials stood out in the alleged formation of cartel/collusion with the increase in price and decrease in the quantity imported for the post- and early-AD investigation period. This study suggests caution in the results presented, since it did not have access to the production and cost data of the firms investigated; however, the results assessed are convincing in the defense of a competitive market in the healthy environment of international trade protection, antidumping mechanism.