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Over time, India has become one of the most active users of anti-dumping duties in the world. In recent years, investigations have proliferated across steel, chemicals, solar equipment, engineering goods, and a broad range of industrial inputs. News of new cases, or extensions or reviews, arrives almost every quarter. From a distance, it may seem that the government is simply standing firm against import pressure. A closer examination of the outcomes on manufacturing tells a more disturbing story.
If anti-dumping duties were really providing durable relief, import dependence should have eased in at least some sectors. Instead, it has deepened further. India’s trade deficit with China expanded sharply in 2024-25, driven significantly by manufactured goods. Imports of machinery, components, and other industrial inputs keep rising, even in sectors that have seen repeated trade actions. This is no accident; the growing gap between legal interventions and market reality reflects how anti-dumping is being used and what it cannot achieve.
Anti-dumping duties address a narrow problem: the unfair pricing of a particular product over a defined period. They work best when dumping is short-lived and opportunistic. What Indian manufacturers confront today, however, is different. Competition now comes from firms that operate at scale, receive sustained state support, and are embedded within deeply integrated global supply chains. A duty on a single product line does little to shift those fundamental dynamics.
Relief That Arrives Too Late
The most serious weakness of India’s anti-dumping regime is timing. Investigations typically take a year or more to conclude. During that period, domestic firms absorb losses, lose orders and, in some cases, shut down capacity. By the time duties are imposed, the damage has already been done.
The steel sector makes this clear. Over the past decade, India has imposed multiple rounds of anti-dumping and safeguard duties on steel imports from China, Vietnam and other countries. Each intervention brings temporary relief. Prices stabilise, margins recover, and domestic mills gain some breathing space. But the relief rarely lasts. Imports return when duties lapse, when exporters reroute shipments through third countries, or when products are slightly modified to fall outside the scope of the duty. Capacity utilisation improves briefly, then slips again. The legal action succeeds. The market outcome does not.
For smaller manufacturers, the problem is sharper. Many firms in chemicals, light engineering and intermediate goods simply cannot afford to wait through long investigations or fund repeated legal proceedings. Even when duties are eventually imposed, they arrive too late to prevent loss of market share. For these firms, anti-dumping exists in theory but offers little practical protection.
Why This Tool Keeps Being Chosen
Despite these constraints, anti-dumping remains the government’s favourite response to import pressure. The reason is straightforward: it is politically and administratively easy. Trade remedies are rule-based and WTO-compliant, which means that a government can show visible action without engaging in long-term fiscal sacrifice or tackling hard industrial trade-offs. In contrast, more ambitious manufacturing support-building scale, upgrading technology, reforming logistics, and providing stable power pricing-requires cross-ministerial coordination, sustained funding, and political patience. Anti-dumping fills this gap, offering a signal of responsiveness with no hard choices.
This is evident from the experience of solar manufacturing. Duties have been levied, removed and reimposed under different instruments on imported cells and modules. Yet, India continues to rely significantly on imported wafers, polysilicon and manufacturing equipment. The protection of the final product has not transformed industry costs. Local manufacturers remain susceptible to international price volatility and policy uncertainty even after successive trade measures. The legal response has become a substitute for deeper supply-chain decisions.
The phenomenon is not unique to this industry, however. In many industries, trade remedies control the symptoms of a problem while the causes of impaired competitiveness remain unattended. Soon, a pattern emerges: import surge, industry petition, investigation, duty, temporary relief, then renewed pressure.
Activity Is Not the Same as Outcome
Global trade rules are a binding constraint on what can be accomplished through anti-dumping actions. World Trade Organization norms call for evidence-based action targeted at specific products; across-the-board protection cannot be provided. This discipline is important, but it also implies that trade remedies cannot address broad-based cost disadvantages or long-term scale disadvantages. Where import pressure is steady rather than sporadic, relief from anti-dumping duties must necessarily be incomplete.
The increase in case numbers should be interpreted cautiously. The repeated investigations into similar products are not a sign of success; they indicate that deeper manufacturing stresses have not been resolved. When identical sectors continue reappearing before the trade remedy system, it is indicative of problems beyond mere price abuse.
None of this means that anti-dumping duties are unnecessary. They are a legitimate and very often justified part of India’s trade toolkit. But making them the principal response to strain on manufacturing risks confusing activity with outcome. Filing cases and imposing duties may demonstrate effort, but markets respond to cost and scale and to supply chains-not to the mere frequency of the opening of legal proceedings.
As India seeks to deepen its manufacturing base and cut import dependence, a tougher question must be faced: whether anti-dumping duties are used because they actually work, or because they’re an easier fix than the underlying issues. Until that question is addressed, trade remedies will keep appearing busy while manufacturing outcomes stay stubbornly unchanged.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article/column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of South Asian Herald.
