South Korea still pushes US for antidumping tweaks

WASHINGTON, Dec 26 (Reuters) South Korea is still pushing the United States to loosen its anti-dumping laws, even though the issue continues to thwart a free-trade deal between the two countries.

US laws on anti-dumping, which occurs when countries sell goods abroad for less than what they sell them at home, have been a major stumbling point to a proposed trade deal between the two countries.

The White House's US Trade Representative Office must report to Congress by year's end on whether it wants to update US anti-dumping laws. That means the report could be issued this week.

According to a trade official in Seoul, one concession that South Korea is looking for would prevent it from being lumped together with other countries when the United States argues that its companies are hurt by unfairly priced imports.

Seoul is also demanding consultations take place before any anti-dumping probe is launched, and insists that the US Commerce Department use only certain kinds of documentation -- excluding media accounts, for example -- when it calculates damages from allegedly underpriced imports.

Some of those changes would give South Korea the same trade terms that countries like Mexico, Canada, and Israel have with the United States.

But ushering in changes to laws closely guarded by some members of Congress could be difficult, said Gary Hufbauer, a trade expert at the Institute for International Economics.

''From the standpoint of US negotiators, they know how strongly anti-dumping laws are supported by a handful -- but a very powerful handful'' of lawmakers, Hufbauer said. ''So the resistance will be enormous.'' Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez warned in a recent visit to Seoul that tweaking the current laws could ruin the chances for approving a deal in Congress.

The proposed pact with the world's eleventh-largest economy would be the biggest US free-trade deal in a decade. The talks have been overshadowed by a separate dispute over US beef exports to South Korea, which have been effectively halted since 2003.

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