Trade cases jump amid financial crisis - World Bank

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Governments started 53 percent more probes into other countries' trading practices in the third quarter compared to a year earlier as industries sought cover from imports amid the financial crisis, a World Bank report said on Wednesday.

Industry requests for import restrictions -- domestic trade remedies such as anti-dumping and countervailing duties, or safeguards -- were up 30 percent so far in 2009 compared to the same period a year earlier, the report said.

A "striking increase in new anti-dumping investigations" helped drive the increase, wrote Chad Bown, author of the report and a senior economist at the World Bank, who maintains a global anti-dumping database.

More than half of the new investigations in the third quarter were from India, Argentina, the United States and the European Union, Bown said, noting 13 other countries also started at least one investigation.

"China's exporters were the dominant target for these new investigations that may result in import restrictions, being named in over 60 percent of the new country-level investigations," the report said.

Governments imposed 21 percent more import-restricting measures during the first three quarters of 2009, the report said.

"This upward trend will almost certainly increase into 2010 and perhaps beyond due to the large, recent increase in newly initiated investigations," the report said.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Eric Beech)