This database collects information on the use of temporary trade barriers in the form of antidumping, countervailing, and safeguard measures across over 30 countries since the 1980s through 2019. These policy measures, often referred to as trade remedy actions, are implemented by government authorities against imports likely to have an adverse effect on national production, either by dumping, subsidies, or import surges by foreign sellers.
The use of trade policy instruments has been proliferating since the 1980s across both developed and developing countries, leading to questions as to their causes and consequences for global trade, as well as to extent to which they are used for legitimate concerns or arguably abused in their implementation.
In this database, these actions are collected at a detailed level, drawing on notifications, as wells as on national investigation case documents, in the interest of increasing transparency as to these trade policy actions. The dataset includes all investigation actions initiated and/or measures implemented by countries, including a significant amount of information on the initiating cases (and the timing of their progression), the product or product group involved, the national petitioners and foreign entities targeted, and the resulting measured applied. The time series in the database account for measures that may have been suspended over time.