The European Commission announced that one of their most longstanding WTO disputes concerning the US calculation practice of so-called "zeroing" in anti-dumping investigations, is ended. From now on, the excessive American anti-dumping duties will have to be down to WTO level. As a result, no EU exporter should be subject to an anti-dumping duty affected by zeroing in the future.

The European Commission and the US signed a roadmap which sets out the steps the US will take to comply with WTO rulings in the future calculation of duties when the US authorities find that some imported products from a particular exporter enter the US market below the normal market price. This solved one of their most longstanding WTO disputes concerning the US calculation practice of so-called "zeroing" in anti-dumping investigations. In August 2011, the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) decided to revoke the duties imposed on stainless steel sheet and strip in coils from Germany and Italy.

The US authorities uses "Zeroing" that is a calculation method when calculating duty rates for products that entered its market at dumped prices in review investigations. Anti-dumping duties are additional duties which are imposed on top of the normal customs duty to offset dumping. Despite the fact that this methodology was found to be WTO-inconsistent in a series of dispute settlement cases, the current US calculation practice had led to higher duties for EU exporters so far.

Thus, the US committed itself to apply a new methodology to calculate anti-dumping duty rates in all new review anti-dumping investigations launched as of mid-February 2012. In addition, the anti-dumping duty rates on goods imported into the US after May 2010 will also be determined under the new methodology without zeroing. This will benefit about 30 EU exporters who are currently affected by ongoing US anti-dumping administrative reviews for 10 different products.