According to the commission, there is little difference between anti-dumping protection and other trade restrictions.

"Once the emotive terminology is stripped away, any general distinction between anti-dumping protection and conventional tariff protection is a fine one," it said.

"Like tariffs, anti-dumping measures benefit recipient industries, but impose larger costs on other industries, consumers and the broader economy [and] reduce the need for recipient industries to innovate in order to remain competitive and to adjust to changing market conditions more generally.

"If anything, antI-dumping measures lead to worse outcomes for the community than 'comparable' tariff protection – the accompanying administrative and compliance costs are (proportionately) much higher, there are hidden trade deterrence costs and there is scope for overseas suppliers to appropriate duty revenue."

Steel to the fore

The steel industry, which has been subject to intense price competition, has been a major cause of growth in anti-dumping protection, accounting for 86 per cent of investigations and 60 per cent of the protection in force in 2014-15.

For the steel producers, the commission says, anti-dumping has become a means to counter broader structural pressures.

Productivity Commission chairman Peter Harris said the commission had recommended that the anti-dumping system be retained in 2009, but had proposed changes to make it less protectionist and less damaging to wider community.

"As it transpired, the multitude of changes introduced since then have moved the system in the opposite direction [and] recently further changes have been flagged to 'strengthen' the system," he said.

"It is hard to reconcile the recent policy emphasis in this area with the market and trade liberalisation objectives that have underpinned Australia's broader microeconomic reform program in past decades."