ANTI DUMPING DUTY & INERT GASES

Subject: Economy

Context: Anti-dumping duty on inert gas R-134a imports from China extended by six months.

Concept:

An anti-dumping duty is a protectionist tariff that a domestic government imposes on foreign imports that it believes are priced below fair market value.
Dumping is a process where a company exports a product at a price lower than the price it normally charges in its own home market.
The duty is aimed at ensuring fair trading practices and creating a level-playing field for domestic producers vis-a-vis foreign producers and exporters.
The duty is imposed only after a thorough investigation by a quasi-judicial body, such as Directorate General of Trade Remedies, in India.
The imposition of anti-dumping duty is permissible under the World Trade Organization (WTO) regime.

Inert Gases

An inert gas is a gas that does not undergo chemical reactions under a set of given conditions.
The noble gases often do not react with many substances and were historically referred to as the inert gases.
Inert gases are used generally to avoid unwanted chemical reactions degrading a sample. These undesirable chemical reactions are often oxidation and hydrolysis reactions with the oxygen and moisture in air.
The term inert gas is context-dependent because several of the noble gases can be made to react under certain conditions.
Purified argon and nitrogen gases are most commonly used as inert gases due to their high natural abundance (78.3% N2, 1% Ar in air) and low relative cost.
Unlike noble gases, an inert gas is not necessarily elemental and is often a compound gas. Like the noble gases, the tendency for non-reactivity is due to the valence, the outermost electron shell, being complete in all the inert gases.
This is a tendency, not a rule, as noble gases and other “inert” gases can react to form compounds.