This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, August 21st, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

In the context of international trade, there's not much that's more confusing than

anti-dumping duties.

So much of it is done to protect U.S. industries, but what are the unintended consequences?

Cato's Dan Eikensen calls them tariff by Fiat.

We spoke earlier this month.

Among the many facets of trade policy,

we have anti-dumping duties.

How many countries levy these and how does the United States do it?

Well, the US has its own anti-dumping law dating back to 1921. Most countries in the world have anti-dumping laws now as well, following the US example,

because the United States brought anti-dumping into the general agreement on

tariffs and trade, which became the WTO, and it's used to remedy what is considered to be unfair trade. It's used when domestic

industries feel that they are materially injured by reason of less than fair

value imports, which means imports that are priced lower in the

United States than in their home market, that duties can be imposed.

There are many, many problems with the anti-dumping law. It's one of many laws that we have

evaluated and that we have that we take issue with. But the anti-dumping law really goes out of its way to reward litigious petitioning industries, typically the steel industry or chemical industries, upstream industries that want to compel their customers,

downstream steel-using firms, downstream chemical using firms,

into having no choices but to purchase domestically.

And under the law, the petitioning industry can make its claims and demonstrate that it is materially injured.

But those who are adversely affected by the tariffs

...