Malmgren, Karen Philippa
(1991)
Economic statecraft: United States antidumping and countervailing duty policy.
PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.
Abstract
The Antidumping and Countervailing Duty laws are competition policy instruments with which the United States ostensibly seeks to promote the role of market forces, enhance competition and thereby uphold the post-war international economic order. However, through a combination of administrative pragmatism and statutory emendation, these trade laws have evolved into instruments with which the United States impedes market forces and insulates its domestic economy from the very competition these laws supposedly aim to encourage. This is a paradox. Important political issues arise from this paradox which are obscured by the traditional methods of examining trade policy. This dissertation demonstrates that the political aspects can be made apparent if the laws are thought of as instruments of economic statecraft. Through an original application of the theoretical framework David Baldwin has developed in Economic Statecraft, it is argued that the trade remedy laws utilize state power for the purpose of changing the behaviour, beliefs, policies and propensities to act of foreign governments or firms. By examining the detail inherent in the two statutes it is demonstrated that far from compelling foreigners to abide by market forces and undertake competitive trade practices, the US penalizes them for doing so. On the pretext that foreigners' trade practices are "unfair", the US is compelling them to engage in genuinely anticompetitive practices. Competition is the central mechanism of the post-war international trade system. Therefore, the United States is undermining that order with its use of these instruments of statecraft. Further, remedy policy is generating political conflict between the US and its major trading partners because there is fundamental disagreement as to the normal and appropriate role for governments and firms to play in a modern market economy. Differences of opinion about what is "unfair" in this context arise, as is demonstrated, on political grounds rather than economic ones.
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