Trade remedies consists of antidumping, countervailing, and safeguard measures. They are developed to protect domestic producers from unfair foreign competition in case of dumping strategies or subsidies received by foreign producers from their governments. Safeguard measures, allow to protect domestic producers in case of unanticipated market disruptions that may be as the result of trade concessions made by national governments. All three types of measures are allowed to be used by the WTO under certain conditions. While assessing this issue, it is again important to be in the mind that Russia is a member of the Eurasian Economic Union. Russian authorities, it used to be the Ministry of Industry and Trade, no longer have rights to apply trade remedies. They fall within the competence of the Eurasian Economic Commission. To be more precise, the Eurasian Economic Commission department for internal market defense had been responsible for conducting investigations and imposing trade remedy measures. Decision to impose trade remedies are taken by the board of the commission and are binding on all members of the union. Within the Eurasian Economic Union, the following products are subject to definitive trade remedy measures: Steel pipes and tubes, cold-rolled steel products, graphite electrodes, light commercial vehicles, tableware, and kitchenware of porcelain. As for the exporting countries, one could mention first and foremost China and Ukraine, but also the European Union; Turkey, South Korea, Hong Kong, and some other countries. In case solve undertakings of safeguard measures, they are applied on the products originating from all countries. It is worse to mention that neither Russia nor the Eurasian Economic Commission have never applied countervailing measures. We encourage you to find an answer to the question why? Some trade remedies imposed by the Eurasian Economic Union were challenged in the WTO dispute settlement system. In particular, antidumping duties on light commercial vehicles originated from Germany, Italy, and Poland, were found to be inconsistent with the rules of the organization. The complainant party of what the European Union as a WTO member. It is worth to mention that the Eurasian Economic Union does not have a similar status here. So Russia was the only respondent in this case, and the measure rules in favor of a company located in Russia. To conclude the first part of our module, we can mention the following. Russian Trade Policy is developing according to international rules and under the pressure of domestic and international lobbies. Market access for following goods in Russia is quite liberal in terms of tariff regulation. At the same time, imported products might become subject of a severe non-tariff regulation. In 2015, the Russian Federation was ranked 170th out of 189 economies in terms of trading across borders with 10 documents, and 96 hours needed for importing and a course of $1,125. Other indicators rank the Russian Federation differently, observing a gradual improvement in this field. The World Bank Logistic Performance Index for 2018 ranked the Russian Federation as 86 out of 166 economies for logistics generally, and 131st for customs specifically. The World Economic Forum's Burden of Customs Procedures rank the Russian Federation as 88 out of 140 economies. While they're little dispute, the World Bank ranking for technical and methodological reasons, the Federal custom service is taking steps to improve customs operations through especially developed action plan, which sets out a series of measures to simplify customs procedures and improve efficiency for both imports and exports. This should be taken into consideration that the barriers with regard to trade in goods and services might arise from various consideration. For example, national security issues that wish to protect human, animal, and plant lives, or many other economic and non-economic concerns. While assessing any trade-related issue, it should be taken into consideration that many of them are governed at the level of the Eurasian Economic Union.
