Re: Re: WTO stats.

["Jeffrey L. Beatty" <Beatty.4@xxxxxxx>]

At 02:38 PM 12/17/00 -0800, Michael Perelman wrote:

>I never thought about the proliferation of antidumping/countervailing duty
>measures in the way the article set it out.  I realize that the U.S. was
>throwing its weight around with anti-dumping measures, but that they
>become questionable once the smaller countries begin to apply them is a
>fascinating study and hypocrisy.

> -- Michael Perelman Economics Department
>California State University
>Chico, CA 95929
>
>Tel. 530-898-5321
>E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>

Haven't antidumping measures been questionable among economists for a long
time?  My memory is that the standard neoclassical argument is that on the
whole dumping hurts no one insofar as consumers pay lower prices.  The
rejoinder from industrial policy advocates is that dumping is simply a way
to put a country's competition out of business, acquire monopolicy pricing
power, and then jack up prices.

I'm curious, though.  A country's ability to "dump" products assumes that
it can segment the market for those products in such a way as to be able to
sell goods overseas at prices beneath their cost of production.  If indeed
developing countries are able to do this (and this makes the dubious
assumption that all the antidumping actions against developing countries
are justified), is there some special reason developing countries are able
to segment their markets?  Or are their competitors in developed countries
just using "antidumping" arguments as a means of restricting competition
from countries with cheaper labor?



--
Jeffrey L. Beatty
Doctoral Student
Department of Political Science
The Ohio State University
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Email:  Beatty.4@xxxxxxx
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