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Bye, Bye Byrdie (trade sanctions, anti-dumping)
Wall Street Journal ^ | September 1, 2004 | Editorial

Posted on 09/01/2004 5:20:52 AM PDT by OESY

American consumers of everything from shrimp and pasta to candles, ball bearings and steel already bear the high price of anti-dumping tariffs slapped by Washington on hundreds of imports. Now Americans are about to pay again for an anti-dumping policy that is akin to letting the inmates run the asylum.

The World Trade Organization ruled this week that the U.S. could be hit with retaliatory duties if it doesn't do away with the Byrd Amendment. This nasty little rule rewards domestic producers that support dumping petitions with the proceeds of anti-dumping duties. Talk about perverse incentives.

The possible retaliators -- the EU, Japan, Canada, Brazil, India, Mexico, Chile and South Korea -- are important export markets for the U.S. The ruling permits them to levy duties equal to 72% of what they've faced in U.S. anti-dumping duties over the preceding year. According to Dan Ikenson at the Cato Institute, "total retaliation could be in the ballpark of $158 million, most of it coming from Japan."

The WTO ruling is one more reason for Congress to do away with Byrd, which passed in 2000. It also is a challenge to U.S. leadership in the WTO. If the U.S. ignores the WTO when it rules a subsidy illegal, what's to stop China from doing the same? Byrd is opposed by Mr. Bush, whom John Kerry criticized yesterday for "fail[ing] to stand up for American companies and workers at the WTO." Whatever happened to the Senator's concern for "alliances"?

To their credit the Europeans don't seem eager to retaliate. "The legal victory has been won and the preference would be that the U.S. would simply...withdraw the law," an unnamed diplomatic source in Brussels told Reuters....

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: antidumping; byrdamendment; cato; ikenson; trade; tradesanctions; wto; wtoworldtrade

1 posted on 09/01/2004 5:20:53 AM PDT by OESY
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To: OESY

The Wall Street Journal here is idiotic.

The flawed logic of free traders:

America cannot nationalize nor be nationalist... so let the foreigners be in a position to nationalize US assets and factories abroad...

You know, sex can be safe with a WTO condom, not.


2 posted on 09/01/2004 5:35:03 AM PDT by JudgemAll
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To: OESY

The Wall Street Journal here is dialectic communist, I might add.


3 posted on 09/01/2004 5:35:24 AM PDT by JudgemAll
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To: JudgemAll

Which Byrd is it? Robin or Robert?


4 posted on 09/01/2004 5:46:58 AM PDT by EQAndyBuzz (Control the information given to society and you control society.)
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To: JudgemAll

>The Wall Street Journal here is dialectic communist, I might add.

How is it communist to favor keeping government from interfering with free trade?

Trade restrictions only help the few (who have paid off Congress), while hurt everyone else.


5 posted on 09/01/2004 5:52:50 AM PDT by chipengineer
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To: chipengineer
How is it communist to favor keeping government from interfering with free trade?

When we submit "free" trade to the whims of Chinese communists...

Like I said, we do not trust our government, but we trust the Chinese with our goods.... hmmmm. Even if our gov was more mismanaged than in Nigeria, it still would be adultery.

6 posted on 09/08/2004 6:13:57 AM PDT by JudgemAll
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