While policymakers and trade are preoccupied with supply-chain disruptions caused by the conflict in West Asia, the Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR) has quietly gone into overdrive. Between March 18 and 20, the DGTR issued 28 notifications, including 11 final findings, seven initiations of investigations and five sunset reviews.

The downstream industries using the items covered by the notifications may soon face higher input costs. The items targeted by the DGTR included calcined gypsum, insoluble sulfur, untreated fumed silica, sodium hydrosulfide, 2-ethylhexanol, beta naphthol, acetone, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) paste resin, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), polyethylene terephthalate (PET) resin and films, viscose rayon filament (VFY) yarn, nylon filament yarn, elastomeric filament yarn, seamless tubes, pipes and hollow profiles of iron, alloy or non-alloy steel, flat-rolled aluminium products and so on.

Almost all these items are raw materials or intermediates, so any anti-dumping duty on them can raise costs for user industries. For example, higher costs of VFY, a key input in the textile industry, are transmitted down the value chain into fabric and garments. In a sector, where margins are already thin, that matters. The same is true of the chemical and engineering sectors. Research papers in the Indian context have clearly shown that India's anti-dumping system has often functioned more as an industry-protection instrument than as a narrow remedy against genuinely predatory pricing, and that the trade effects are real: targeted imports usually fall, prices tend to rise, and the consumer or user industry interests are often underemphasized.