Antidumping Exposed: The Devilish Details of Unfair Trade Law

by Brink Lindsey

Presently, the U.S. stands alone in opposing meaningful reform-an untenable position. In this book, the authors explain how these insidious rules have endured, and why and how to promote a successful antidumping reform strategy.

200 pages, Hardcover

First published October 25, 2003

Reviews

[Liberté · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a helpful primer for those unfamiliar with antidumping law, both at home and abroad, as covered by WTO policy. However, as it was published in 2003, the reader would be advised to follow up with more recent publications. The authors go through the antidumping law policy by policy and meticulously explain the methods used by the United States Department of Commerce (DOC) as well as the shortcomings of each method, since they often overestimate dumping and thus imposed greater dumping penalties on producers. The data used by the DOC is also often incomplete, provided by domestic producers who have an incentive to drive their foreign rivals out of the marketplace, or the data is substituted from other firms and does not actually to the firm in question. There is also little accounting for different markets creating different price structures. The authors also point out that as more countries institute antidumping policy, more countries have an incentive to institute their own in retaliation, and the authors argue that in many cases - backed up by tables and tables of data - that the effect of the antidumping law as it is now (if not the stated goal) is protectionism, and will lead to less global trade, even where companies who "dump" cheap goods would benefit domestic consumers. Before going on to propose alternatives to the current antidumping law, the authors write "the antidumping law does not do what its supporters say it does. It does not accurately measure the differences between U.S. prices and foreign-market prices. It is therefore incapable of distinguishing between unfair trade and normal, healthy competition. As a result, normal, healthy competition from abroad is all too often stifled in the name of fighting dumping. In other words, the antidumping law, while pretending to secure a level playing field, in fact indulges in old-fashioned protectionism.:

[William · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too technical to my kind of like, where as I expected a title using the word "Exposed" would be more political.