KANSAS CITY, Missouri – American farmers need to rethink their support for their country’s tough anti-dumping laws, a former U.S. agriculture secretary told the National Pork Industry Forum.
If those United States laws persist, American hog farmers may find it is their product that is being targeted around the world by producers in other countries using copycat laws.
Clayton Yeutter, who was agriculture secretary in the senior George Bush administration and United States trade representative in Ronald Reagan’s second term, said U.S. anti-dumping laws work so well at protecting the interests of domestic producers that countries around the world are copying them.
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Recently European Union trade negotiator Pascal Lamy, a supporter of liberalized trade, warned U.S. congressmen that U.S.-style anti-dumping laws were being embraced in many countries and that they could soon appear “all over the place against American exporters,” said Yeutter.
He said Lamy told them that “the U.S. is setting the example here, which is not a terribly good example in many respects, that may really come back to haunt us.”
Yeutter told the pork forum, “I happen to think Pascal Lamy is absolutely right.”
U.S. anti-dumping and countervailing laws allow it to set high tariffs against foreign products if a preliminary investigation suggests those products are being sold below the cost of production or with the aid of illegal subsidies.
These measures have been used against many Canadian products such as hog exports and softwood lumber, and have cost Canadian producers millions of dollars in expenses and lost market opportunities, even when the Canadians have eventually won the disputes. The hog dispute cost Canadian producers more than $10 million to fight.
Now Canadian corn producers have managed to get duties imposed against American corn imports because of U.S. subsidies, using Canada’s version of the U.S. laws.
Yeutter, who did not refer directly to the Canadian situation, said the U.S. laws are counterproductive if they encourage other countries to respond in kind, so the U.S. needs to consider reforming them.
“There are a lot of things that could be done to improve the WTO anti-dumping code and also the anti-dumping laws of the United States,” said Yeutter.
But he said changing these tough laws would not be popular with U.S. politicians, who enjoy the big hammer the laws provide.
“There is vigorous opposition in the U.S. Congress to changing one word in U.S. anti-dumping laws,” said Yeutter.
“Every time that anyone in the (United States trade representative’s office) has raised this issue internationally, members of Congress have wanted to slit the USTR’s throat. They have consistently said ‘do not change our anti-dumping laws. We want to be able to stop dumping into the U.S. market.’ “
But Yeutter said there is a real chance now for a World Trade Organization trade deal to be made before the end of the year, and hog producers need to achieve better access and have fewer impediments to trade.
United States secretary of agriculture Mike Johanns was cautious about the issue when asked about it the next day in a news conference.
“It’s part of the negotiations (for a world trade deal),” said Johanns.
“We do hear discussion and the issue of anti-dumping does come up and it is very much a part of the negotiations … Countries do push back on the anti-dumping provisions and approaches. We do hear about it in the discussions.”
