Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

To play devil's advocate, can someone provide a single historical example of a case where dumping "worked," in the sense that one country's manufacturers were able to rake in large profits after their foreign competitors went out of business due to subsidies?

Because unless dumping actually succeeds at that goal, and I don't see any evidence that it does, it seems indistinguishable to American consumers from a huge technical advance in a foreign country lowering the cost of some import--yes, it may be detrimental to domestic producers, but it's a huge benefit to domestic consumers and a net benefit overall.




Rare earth metals dumping caused all US mines to close for decades.


Greed by American companies outsource to low cost countries played a part too. The owners of the mines would rather buy and operate mines in low cost countries. It isn't simply the case that evil foreign government sets up a mine and dumps the raw material; often they allow the owners of existing mines in the West to buy concessions to operate them because then the country receives the expertise and a profit at the expense of the workers in the West. But, the Western owners of the Western mines make even more profit, at least in the short term.


Sometimes US firms go out of business when they compete with foreign firms. Even if that's because of "unfair" subsidies from foreign governments, that's indistinguishable from some foreign technological improvement that allows competitors to produce their goods more cheaply than US firms. I'm specifically asking for evidence of the followup: the part where foreign firms have no competition and rack up massive profits at our expense.


Shale oil?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: