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… is from page 43 of Brink Lindsey’s and Dan Ikenson’s excellent 2003 book, Antidumping Exposed: The Devilish Details of Unfair Trade Laws [2]:
The antidumping law is defended as a remedy for market distortions caused by foreign government policies. Yet in actual practice, the methods of determining dumping under the law fail, repeatedly and at multiple levels, to distinguish between normal commercial pricing practices and those that reflect market-distorting government policies.
As a result, antidumping law as it currently exists routinely punishes normal competitive business practices – practices commonly engaged in by American companies at home and abroad. It is therefore not the case that the law guarantees a level playing field for American companies and their foreign competitors. On the contrary, it actively discriminates against foreign goods by subjecting them to requirements not applicable to American products.
DBx: Of course, the discrimination unleashed by so-called “antidumping law” discriminates ultimately against flesh-and-blood Americans who wish to purchase the foreign goods that are subject to this “law.”
Count on it: in practice, whenever you encounter a plea for government intervention as a means of allegedly “leveling the playing field,” grab your wallet because the ‘leveling’ is never anything other than a means of picking your pocket.