Steel Dumping Quotas Dumped

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 .

Comments

[Eddy]

Does this mean the U.S. auto industry is still incompetent?

[Sam Franklin]

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.)

[LJJ]

It wasn't just Ford and GM that was looking to scrap those quotas. Honda and Toyota also wanted to see cheaper steel.

[Ayatollah Usoe]

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.