screw the investors, diss the President, screw the WTO... did I log on to DU by accident?
Good grief this is over the Byrd Amendment, but nobody has said a word about Byrd. Byrd sneaked the amendment in via an unrelated appropriations bill, in spite of numerous warnings that exactly this would happen, and it was signed into law by that perennial favorite William Clinton. So everybody is getting upset over a Byrd/Clinton measure. I would think that conservatives would be saying "I told you so." At least free trade conservatives.
The amendment does not stop anti-dumping measures on behalf of the United States. It requires that penalties for dumping be distributed to the specific companies which brought the suit in the first place. Most free trade advocates consider it bad law because it simply invites retaliation in kind. It gives a company a specific financial incentive to create a dumping suit -- the kind of approach that appeals to trial lawyers -- because the company gets to pocket the proceeds.
The 150 million dollar fine is trivial compared to the stakes involved. What to do at this point is a debatable issue, with free traders on one side and protectionists on the other and politics in the middle. I'm not sure at all that characterizing this as a 'Euroweenie' issue with conservatives all on one side is helpful in producing anything but a feeding frenzy.
That's like saying, This is a debatable issue, with the good guys on my side and the bad guys on the other side. If you read the thread, you'll see that the debate isn't as you characterize it. The WTO is not about free trade. It's about trade managed by unaccountable globocrats. If that's what you want to defend, have at it, but don't misrepresent it.