환율문제에 대한 통상법적 제재 연구

Since weakening the value of one country’s currency can lead to boost exports and create jobs, countries compete against each other to achieve a relatively low exchange rate for their own currency at the expense of other countries. Against this backdrop, over the past decade, the US Congress has been tried to establish rules to address undervalued currency. In context of handling the sustained global imbalance and strong dollar, both Houses of the US Congress submitted bills on February 10, 2015 to authorize countervailing duties against exports subsidized by undervalued currencies. This paper analyses whether a countervailing duty(CVD) applied according to US currency legislation would be consistent with WTO’s Subsidies and Countervailing Measures(SCM) Agreement. This Paper concludes due to several significant potential obstacles related to ‘benefits conferred’ and ‘specificity’, it would be hard to justify the measure of imposing countervailing duty to allegedly undervalued currencies under SCM Agreement. Meanwhile, according to sources, the currency provisions are included in the recently completed TPP. Since Seoul is open to the possibility of joining the TPP, it would be wise to explore the text after the release of it and examine the impact. Considering the low exchange rate problem is a global one not confined to the specific region, in order to better address it, countries all over the world should make efforts to set the world currency policy rules through international agreements. Hope that the global rules for the currency policy be established soon.