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… is from page 323 of the 1936 English-language edition (translated from German by Alfred Stonier and Frederic Benham) of Gottfried Haberler [2]’s classic 1933 work, The Theory of International Trade With Its Application to Commercial Policy [3]:
The effects upon the importing country of imports which are cheap because they are dumped are in no way different from those of imports which are cheap for some other reason.
DBx: Protectionists grab for any excuse to drape their naked rent-seeking in costumes designed to fool the public into mistaking this rent-seeking for something more noble and less venal. And no excuse is as frequently used these days as is that modern-day version of the antiquated notion of “just prices” – namely, “predatory prices” or “unfairly low prices.”
The fact is, there is no “correct” price for any particular good or service other than the one that emerges from the bargaining of buyers and sellers. And – more to Haberler’s point – from the perspective of participants in the domestic economy, the reason why the prices charged by some foreign sellers in the domestic market are what they are is is utterly irrelevant.
The entire notion of “dumping” should be discarded in a dump.