Posted on 09/13/2010 7:18:34 PM PDT by Kaslin
If union bosses and a few industrial titans have their way, a hearing in a Washington, D.C. bureaucratic back room this week will lead to higher prices on ordinary daily goods for virtually every consumer in America.
On September 16, the Department of Commerce International Trade Commission will hold a hearing to decide if foreign paper is simply too cheap. And by that the government means to decide whether foreign suppliers of some pulp and paper products have “dumped” their products, which means they sell them at unfairly low prices.
That the hearing is taking place is something of a coup. A similar complaint was filed by a colluding cadre of unions and paper and pulp makers a few years ago and dismissed because domestic companies had not been harmed.
But the groups are back at it, hoping a different administration and an improved playbook will carry the day. To most Americans, already hit hard by a down economy, nothing seems more natural than being suspicious of foreign companies. After all, they’re the devil we don’t know.
What’s more interesting is that these fears are being exploited by the devils we do -- the pushers of a new “green protectionism.”How do we know Americans are worried about foreign competitors and products ranging from paper to tires and more? Well, a poll from the “Alliance for American Manufacturing” tells us so. Haven’t heard of that group? Here are the basics: It’s a joint effort of the United Steelworkers union and a handful of U.S. companies apparently tired of the rigors of a competitive marketplace. Its creators have deep pockets and a deeper interest in keeping out competition.
The “Alliance” -- whose head is a longtime union lobbyist -- funded the key economic “study” that triggered the government’s review of paper prices, and the document was put together by a “think tank” known as the Economic Policy Institute. That group has at least 10 of the nation’s biggest union bosses as its board of directors and has acknowledged a third of its funding has come from labor unions. And don’t forget that EPI took in a cool $100,000 from the Steelworkers in 2009.
About 100 politicians then referenced that “study” in a letter asking the president to support action against foreign competitors.
Look beyond the specifics of the case and one thing is abundantly clear: the public is likely to get skewered because far-left special interests in the Big Labor and Big Environment camps have figured out how to rig backroom hearings.
Despite long-held resentment, union bosses and professionally run environmental PR machines have increasingly worked to find common ground in recent years and they have come up with a frighteningly efficient special-interest playbook -- one that has been successful at getting bad ideas more consideration than they deserve.
The groups have set aside their differences to push carbon tariffs, which would have the effect of making foreign goods dramatically more expensive. They have teamed up to push for government handouts of “green” projects (so long as they use “green jobs” and associated training programs that are generally difficult for non-union employees to access).
There are entire organizations now, going by names like the “BlueGreen Alliance” and the “Apollo Alliance.” Different names but the same goal: In each case, green groups get to dictate what consumers consume, and labor bosses dictate who makes the products and for which (inflated) prices.
And despite their apparent disdain for trade, these groups are importing campaigns that have already harmed consumers elsewhere in the Anglosphere.
To see the future in America, look no further than the experience of paper and pulp makers abroad. An analysis from Australia’s Institute of Public Affairs found that collusion among the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Greenpeace, a major trade union, and local companies would cost consumers 42 percent more for a product like toilet paper.
Should collusion carry the day in the U.S., domestic consumers would see massive tariffs on foreign goods, which will allow producers like Sappi, NewPage, and Appleton to raise their prices (even as they have, incredibly and unconscionably, accepted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars in U.S. “black liquor” renewable resource tax credits for burning byproducts with diesel).
All of which is a long way of getting to one point: the paper fight is just the most recent symbol of the growing threat of “green protectionism.”
There is one type of “green protectionism” I would like to see: toward prevention of the introduction of exotic pathogens, particularly plant pathogens. I am sick and tired of paying the cost for battling weeds and losing good trees to diseases so that others get their goods cheaper.
ping
Cargo can bring these in, but so can passengers.
In the case of Phytophthora ramorum it was nursery plants.
Wasn't Dutch Elm disease enough for us to learn that lesson?
It's always something. They want control so they'll play any card they got, whether it's the race card, the patriot card, and now the "exotic pathogens" card.
The problem is not the goal, but the means. Using government to manage such risks is fraught with corrupt opportunity. That is why civil liability and an insurance industry free to both mitigate and reduce the cost of risk is a superior model.
So we're saying we need enforcement of existing laws, not new tax hikes or new regulations on imports. Sounds good to me
No. I want the US government out of the inspection business, but I also want the laws protecting the vectors removed. In other words, we need to privatize the inspection function as agents for the insurers of the would-be vectors, effectively inducing a free market in managing the cost of those risks. From there, all we need is to actually enforce criminal law for fraud, jailing and fining any actor who cheats the system.
Yeah, I know, try that in China. Well, they can otherwise pay for one serious inspection when the stuff hits the dock for all I care because the company behind the guy who signs it off has its butt in that sling.
Most Americans have no idea of the damage pests and pathogens are doing, much less what they portend. I promise you, with the system we have now we are courting risks that could become catastrophic, but are more likely to be merely hideously expensive.
Existing laws and rules operate to exculpate those who import pathogens, seeds, pests, etc by socializing the risks thereof. Competing American producers then bear the sole cost of controlling a problem that grows with little restraint all on its own with bureaucrats chasing it with risky "biocontrols" and regulating pesticides and control measures until the price is out of sight. Those costs reduce the competitiveness of American products both internally and for export. I want those trading in products that carry attendant biological risks to own the liability for those externalities; they are effectively operating as wanton vectors.
Sounds like my personal experience differs a lot from your study of import procedures, but I won't belabor the point. In fact, I'll vote for your inspection privatization proposal and you can vote for any import tax cuts on the table.
Think Formosan termite, fire ant, or Japanese beetle. My experience is more with the consequences of the failure of those procedures. Once a pest escapes, they cost far more to control than the most outrageous inspection, a cost born almost entirely by someone who had no role in the transaction that introduced the pest, deriving little to no benefit thereby.
Hey, don't get me wrong --just because I'm able to find so many good things happening in the world doesn't mean I don't know bad things are happening all the time too. Maybe I talk about good things more than bad ones because I like good things more and I spend more time there.
I have actually beaten back 150 years of exotic infestations and re-established the only native plant habitat that includes small annual forbs on the entire Central Coast of California. So I don't just bitch, but I am in a unique position to assess the true cost of mitigating exotic infestations, the single largest cause of extirpation in the continental US.
You see, if somebody doesn't do this work, those native plants produce no seed. Eventually, it goes bad, which for the most part it had on our place. Meanwhile, the greenies bitch incessantly about "protecting nature" when in reality I can prove that there isn't any "Natural" out there. It is all either infested, overcome by succession, or developed.
This has been a 20-year effort that has cost me over $1 million in lost income and cash outlays to prove what it actually takes to get this kind of work done. Thence I will have established the acknowledged expertise with which to go after these crooks in court. For that one needs standing. I hold a patent for the first free-market environmental management business method with which to go after these crooks. I have standing.
I don't just bitch. I do. You can read more about that here, here, and here.
Hmmm, I still got my California professional civil engineering registration current; let me know if you need my name/resume in your 'staff' for some proposal but I digress and we can work that out later. Right now I own a rainforest reserve in Panama and I hear you on the 'infested, overcome by succession, or developed' bit.
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.