Brian Doherty | December 15, 2006
As discussed over at the Cato blog by Daniel Ikenson, the International Trade Commission has surprisingly done the right thing and revoked "longstanding antidumping and countervailing duty restrictions against imported carbon steel plate and corrosion-resistant steel from 15 different countries." (They are keeping them against corrosion-resistant steel from Germany and Korea for at least another five years.)
My previous blogging on how these duties hurt American steel-using companies in order to help eternally poor-mouthing steel-making companies here .
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Thanks for the good news. Sometimes I get so caught up in the
peace-nikking and Bush-bashing tat I miss a good story like this.
this is the kind of thing that makes me self-identify as
"libertarian" in the first place.
Anybody have any idea if this positive development would have gone
forward anyway if Kerry had been electred? (Sincere question.)
It wasn't just Ford and GM that was looking to scrap those quotas. Honda and Toyota also wanted to see cheaper steel.
There are more jobs in the US making things out of steel, than
jobs making steel. Trying to protect the steel worker's job leads
the foreign competitor to export the finished good instead of the
steel. Import restrictions put more US jobs at risk.
When dumping is outlawed, only outlaws will take dumps.
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