Who's dumping on consumers?

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Do you like shrimp but wish it cost more? Need bedroom furniture but hate getting a good deal on it? If so, you're very different from most Americans. You are, however, one of the few who can rejoice in our national trade policies.

Politicians know U.S. consumers are more than happy to buy foreign goods if the quality is sufficient and the price is right. They also know explicit efforts to shut out imports are usually political fool's gold, more likely to bring defeat than victory at the polls.

So how can our leaders cater to corporate executives and workers who resent competition, without looking like hidebound protectionists? Simple: They don't attack trade -- they attack "dumping."

When it comes to trade, many Americans cherish the notion we are victims of our innocent good-heartedness. In this picture, we're always being cynically exploited by underhanded foreigners while our own companies play by the rules.

The anti-dumping laws are supposed to correct the problem by banning any imports sold below "fair value," a baffling concept understood by bureaucrats but not economists.

The Bush administration made use of the law this week when it proposed slapping shrimp producers from China and Vietnam with special import duties of up to 113 percent. Earlier, it imposed such tariffs on wooden bedroom furniture from China. It's also taken steps toward similar action on all sorts of foreign items, including lumber from Canada, aluminum from South Africa and steel wire strand from South Korea.

A spokeswoman for the Commerce Department's International Trade Administration, when asked how many anti-dumping orders are now in effect, responds as if I've invited her to count all the cactuses in Arizona. She can't come up with a tally on short notice but says it is "in the hundreds, maybe more than hundreds." And that doesn't include those pending.

For an administration that boasts of its devotion to tax cuts, these efforts represent an unnoticed and unwarranted tax increase on American manufacturers, retailers and consumers. They also violate the president's supposed faith in free trade, which he touts as a contrast to Democrat beliefs that, in his words, "the solution to jobs uncertainty is to isolate America from the world."

The theory behind the anti-dumping laws is that foreign companies get all sorts of subsidies from their governments, which allow them to sell at prices that would bankrupt any legitimate producer. Other countries supposedly solve their overproduction problems by unloading their excess goods on the U.S. market, helping their workers at the expense of ours.

The concept of "predatory pricing" is not entirely implausible. But you don't need anti-dumping orders to deal with such wrongdoing -- it can be prosecuted (and punished more sternly) as an antitrust violation. In fact, as the Congressional Budget Office notes, "Few dumping cases today involve predatory pricing, and the law makes no attempt to restrict duties to such cases." It's like prosecuting people for grand larceny though they are not accused of stealing anything.