{"id":140643,"date":"2010-01-05T10:23:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T15:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/our-new-steel-duties-on-china-are-really-a-tax-on-american-businesses-2010-1"},"modified":"2010-01-05T10:23:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-05T15:23:00","slug":"our-new-steel-duties-on-china-are-really-a-tax-on-american-businesses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/140643","title":{"rendered":"Our New Steel Duties On China Are Really A Tax On American Businesses"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"SteelThe next wave of protectionism will not be labeled ‘protectionism.’ It will instead come in the guise of ‘sanctions’ for transgressions against the positions of the United States government when it comes to labor practices, environmental reforms, or free trade.<\/p>\n

So we weren’t surprised when the the U.S. International Trade Commission recently voted<\/a> to impose duties on Chinese-made steel pipe in retaliations for domestic steel industry subsidies by the Chinese government. This is classic recession-era protectionism dressed up in the guise of promoting free trade.<\/p>\n

One thing that’s gone unremarked in this fight, however, is that it’s not really a trade war between the US and China. Actually, the US and China steel makers are kind of allies in this fight. They’re both special interests exploiting their own domestic political machinery to exact narrowly delivered government subsidies that are paid for by their countrymen.<\/p>\n

It’s a classic war of special interests against the public interest: the Chinese steel makers exploiting the Chinese people by expropriating tax money and the American steel makers exploiting America people by raising the costs for US businesses and, eventually, consumers.<\/p>\n

Is it a good idea to raise the costs of American US businesses during a recession? You can probably answer that question for yourself.<\/p>\n

Over at The American, Mark Perry<\/a> rewrites a Reuters news story to accurately describe what the Trade Commission is really doing and why they are really doing it, first and foremosts, to Americans and not the Chinese:<\/p>\n

A U.S. trade panel gave final approval on Wednesday to duties<\/span> taxes <\/strong>ranging from 10 to 16 percent on cost-conscious firms in the U.S. who purchase low-priced <\/strong>Chinese-made steel pipe rather than high-price domestic pipe<\/strong>, in the biggest U.S. trade case to date against China <\/span>American companies (and their shareholders, employees, and customers) who shop globally for their inputs and find the best value in China.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Read the rest of the the rewrite–>><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Join the conversation about this story »<\/a><\/p>\n

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The next wave of protectionism will not be labeled ‘protectionism.’ It will instead come in the guise of ‘sanctions’ for transgressions against the positions of the United States government when it comes to labor practices, environmental reforms, or free trade. So we weren’t surprised when the the U.S. International Trade Commission recently voted to impose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":814,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/814"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}