The Southern Tier Cement Committee (STCC), the ad hoc association of 27 U.S. cement producers, filed a petition in late February with the Secretariat responsible for antidumping disputes under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The petition asks Mexico and the United States to honor their NAFTA obligations and establish an Extraordinary Challenge Committee (ECC), which was requested by the United States on March 23, 2000. The U.S. sought the ECC review of a June 18, 1999, ruling by a Mexican-majority binational panel established under Chapter 19 of NAFTA that overturned certain aspects of an antidumping determination by the U.S. Department of Commerce on Mexican cement. The request for ECC review was the first made by the United States under NAFTA.

The petition filed by STCC notes that Mexico and the United States were legally obligated within 15 days of the U.S. request to select three judges or retired judges to serve as members of the ECC. Mexico, however, has refused to appoint a member to the panel. According to the STCC petition, “As long as the United States and Mexico refuse to honor their obligations under the NAFTA, the STCC and its members have no possibility of overturning the panel's ruling and of obtaining distributions of antidumping duties” under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act of 2000. “This breakdown in the system,” the petition continues, “has deprived the STCC and its members of their right to property without due process of law and denied them equal protection of the law as provided for in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.”

As an alternative to the establishment of the ECC, the petition asks the governments of the U.S. and Mexico to terminate the proceeding and reinstate Commerce's original determination, which found that Mexican producer Cemex S.A. was dumping cement in the United States by a margin of 73.69%.