Antidumping Investigations and the Pass-Through of Exchange Rates and Antidumping Duties

We present a model that shows that exchange rate pass-through is likely to be substantially altered when firms face antidumping (AD) duties and that optimal pass-through of AD duties may be up to 200 percent. We examine both pass-through issues using monthly prices across 345 U.S.- imported Canadian iron and steel products from 1989 through 1995, some of which received duties in U.S. AD cases filed in 1992. We find that exchange rate pass-through rise dramatically after products received AD duties, with no such change for closely-related products not subject to final AD duties. This result has important implications for previous studies that have pooled AD and non-AD products. We also find that pass-through of the final AD duties is 160 percent, which is consistent with our model's predictions.