Who Really Wants to Defend Dumping as a Trade Practice?

Here's the simple recipe for building your country's economy at the expense of another:

Stir in subsidies to your steel and aluminum plants.

Dump the product on other countries.

Wait as you watch that other country, fearing retaliation, do nothing.

Fold that other country's steel and aluminum plants out of business.  Forever.

Raise prices after your competition is gone.



Dumping is unfair trade.  Always.

Given a level playing field and fair trade, our steel and aluminum plants can compete.

Tariffs are a tool in the fair trade business that sometimes need to be deployed to level the playing field and take the long term view.  President Trump is using the pragmatic tools of negotiation.

In the long-term, the consumer benefits from fair prices (albeit not subsidized in the short term) and our country retains the ability to domestically provide an absolutely essential ingredient for national defense--metal making.

I can defend pragmatic tariffs.  Who really wants to defend dumping?

Be It Solar Panels, Steel, or Aluminum, Dumping is Unfair Trade. Period.

Dumping, in economic terms, is defined as providing a product at a lower price than the market bears.  Companies, aided often by their country's government, do this to increase their market share by bankrupting their foreign competitors.  The result, long-term, is higher prices for consumers everywhere as competition is artificially thwarted.

Dumping is unfair trade.  It has been often seen and proved in the steel industry.  Aluminum and food products have also been proven to be dumped.

Solar panels now are on that list of proven, dumped products.

A recent U.S. International Trade Commission finding was in favor of U.S. solar panel manufacturers against Chinese dumping of solar panels.  Georgia-based Suniva Solar brought the suit and was joined by others.

The Hill now reports backlash.  "Dump on us," would seem to be the call of a most unusual coalition of right wing and left wing interests.

If this story is to be believed, some environmentalists who favor solar panels fear tariffs that level the playing field in trade will make solar panels less affordable in the U.S.  Subsidies have given solar energy a competitive leg up. They like the subsidies.

If this story is to be believed, these folks have aligned with groups which despise tariffs of any kind on the premise that tariffs are a form of federal subsidies.  They dislike the subsidies.

Both are wrong.

No one should ever say, "Go ahead. Dump on us."  To allow dumping is to permit unfair trade practices that undermine, long-term, domestic manufacturing.

I make no apology for my manufacturing bias.  Be it solar panels, steel, or aluminum, dumping is unfair trade.  Period.

My Manufacturing Bias: Exports Key to Ohio Manufacturing

I confess.  I do have a manufacturing bias. 

The latest edition of the Ohio Manufacturers' Association's report "Ohio Manufacturing Counts" does a great job of explaining the manufacturing bias we should all have in Ohio if we care about our economy and the future of our state.

The report also touches an issue that can tend to be the third rail in politics--don't touch it.

Where would our nation, and Ohio in particular, be without exports?  Fair trade matters in Ohio.  27.6% of manufacturing jobs rely on exports with $50 billion in products exported to 211 countries.


Excerpted from 2014 Ohio Manufacturing Counts report.

Exports grew more than 10% since 2011 and 50% since 2009. 

And the countries to whom we export products is diverse.  Almost half of our exports are owed to NAFTA trading partners (that's noteworthy!) and China is a growing export market for Ohio manufactured goods as well.

Excerpted from 2014 Ohio Manufacturing Counts report.

See the Ohio Manufacturing Counts piece and my past pieces excerpted from the report.