TheAgitator.com
The Free Trade President
Thursday, July 8th, 2004This shrimp tariff grows fishier (sorry) by the minute.
Turns out, the tariff is the result of an anti-dumping case brought by domestic seafood producers. The Commerce Department ruled that Vietnam is too loose with its government shrimp subsidies and, therefore, is selling shrimp in the U.S. at artificially low costs. (Cheap shrimp? The horror!)
The notion the Bush administration admonishing another country for ag subsidies is in itself pretty laughable. Bush of course signed an ag bill not only reinstating farm subsidies that the Clinton administration had begun phasing out actually increasing them to levels never seen before.
But it gets worse. It turns out that the U.S. shrimp growers’ anti-dumping case was financed by — are you ready for this? — state and federal subsidies to U.S. shrimp growers!
That’s right. Big Shrimp used domestic subsidies to finance an anti-dumping case against competitors it argued were overly subsidized.
And there’s more. Guess where the revenues from those tariffs will go? Directly into the pocket of the U.S. shrimp industry.
The whole scam means that you’ll soon be paying about 40% more for shrimp. And that number will grow if Commerce extends the tariff to other developing countries with shrimp farms. The Bush administrations latest free trade sellout also threatens to undermine a U.S. trade agreement with Vietnam negotiated by the Clinton administration.
Yet more evidence that Bill Clinton was far friendlier to global trade than the current president.
i currently pay 12.99 a pound at the grocery. this could put a damper on my linguine with cream and pecorino romano. it won’t be the same without the shrimpies though. may have to do scallops instead. michelle
michelle’s reaction is a big reason why this protectionist crap never works anyhow. People are simply going to shift to other more competatively priced products. The shrimp industry will net out no more revenue then before (and likely have less revenue).
I still lean towards retaliatory trade measures when a foreign country subsidizes an industry with tax revenue, but that retaliation is only warranted if your own economy is a free market.
Clinton also was friendlier to our foreign enemies, most notably the Chinese.
Who really cares about this? We’re the richest nation on Earth. This is pennies on the dollar. We were rich in the era of high tariffs, and we’re rich now. We’re rich because we have property protection, entrepreneurialism, and good laws at home. Our modest restrictions on trade hardly matter.
Since this is all about money in the end, I find it odd that people like you get so exorcised about this. I also find it odd that the attitudes of big businessmen (and small businessmen) are so much less dogmatic than the “Defenders of the Capitalistic Faith” who are either in school or working in nonprofits.
It seems to me that the US is a monopsony, i.e., a really big buyer. Shouldn’t we use this power to jack around foreign countries on behalf of the US?
“Shouldn’t we use this power to jack around foreign countries on behalf of the US?”
“I’m sorry poor Vietnamese man, but since you’re cheaper, we’re gonna have to stop using you and make sure OUR citizens pick up the tab for it. While I’m at it, why don’t I break both of your legs so I can feel good about giving you crutches.”.
Use WHAT power? The power to pay more? The power to force citizens into buying from only sellers that the government approves of? The power to help 3rd world nations stay 3rd world?We’ve seen what subsidies do to governments budgets. The cheaper it gets sold, the less that it made off of it, and the more it costs the government in the end. Vietnam would have to subsidize it’s industries to the point of bankruptcy(oops..already there, aren’t they?) before it would would have any significant impact on the US economy. When will it finally be understood by all that the US cannot be the largest exporter of everything? It’s only shrimp for god’s sake. They aren’t anything except coachroaches that live under water anyways. We may be better off than other nations, but do we have to force our people into paying more to prove it? Are we better off showing them the great freedoms that we have, or just that we’re a bunch of whiny bitches?
Bitches:1
Freedom:0
Not looking too good so far.
Big Shrimp. Classic.
= :O
Hypocrisy In Action: Vietnamese Shrimp “Dumping”
I covered the story of the lousy case for tariffs against Chinese shrimp in my most recent post. Radley Balko takes the US to task for its lousy case against Vietnamese shrimp: Turns out, the tariff is the result of…
Bomb them. Can you spell “Tonkin”? That’s probably where the shrimp are from.
Ok, that was just a joke.
But seriously, the elimination of government subsidies should be a prerequisite to free trade agreements. Otherwise, the market, led like a blind fool, will come to prefer subsidized food, and subsidies will actually get worse. Subsidies will beget more subsidies, through the very nature of the beast.
“That guy is selling shrimp cheaper than we poor shrimpers can, because his government pays him to. I don’t know if I can make it, I just might lose my job. Please, Mr. Dept of Agriculture, can I have a subsidy too?”
And of course those hapless hacks at the Dept Agriculture, sitting on their 80-fucking-billion-dollar budget will “rescue” poor shrimp farmers from unfair competition in an effort to “level” the playing field.
Don’t you free trade advocates understand your own god damn point? The MARKET will NOT PUNISH SUBSIDIES, AS IT SHOULD. That’s the whole reason you hate them. They chase themselves around and around in a circle and do NOT work themselves out.
SUBSIDIES should be eliminated. SUBSIDIES invite more SUBSIDIES. SUBSIDIES inspire SUBSIDY jealousy. SUBSIDIES beget SUBSIDIES.
I don’t know what in the hell point you’re trying to make, Radley, ya quack.
“NO, please don’t let force us to PAY MORE FOR SHRIMP BECAUSE WE’D RATHER BUY CHEAPER SHRIMP BECAUSE IT’S SUBSIDIZED.”
The irony fairy is jumping up and down on your shoulder staring you in the face and laughing her little pink ass off.
We should LAUNCH a TRADE STANDOFF.
We will refuse to allow the import of subsidized merchandise.
And, in reaction, all our trade partners will DO THE SAME TO US.
Then we will realize how much it SUCKS to NOT TRADE.
And we’ll refuse to back down. And they’ll refuse to back down.
UNTIL BOTH SIDES WILL ELIMINATE SUBSIDIES.
WE MUST ELIMINATE OUR OWN.
THEY MUST ELIMINATE THEIRS.
TARIFFS ARE NOT THE ANSWER. BANS ARE.
Will someone please explain to me in simple terms what subsidies are? I generally know what they are but not specifically. Email me if you like.
Ms Dani, subsidies are a precise opposite of taxes. In order to make a company/industry/product more competitive in the market the government give out public money either on a production basis ($5 per ton of steel) or in agreed lump sums.
Think of being given money for every dollar you earn instead of having money taken off, and you’re more or less there.
“The irony fairy is jumping up and down on your shoulder staring you in the face and laughing her little pink ass off.”
I’ll have to remember that one
Bernard, thank you for the explanation. So basically, subsidies are what I thought they were. I just didn’t want to believe my suspicions, that we are ass-backward and confused in this so-called capitalistic country.
Ms Dani, subsidies creep upwards because they’re a vote winner. It’s the old pork-barrel problem. If you channel small quantities of money from a large number of people to give large quantities of money to a small number of people, then the large number of people barely notice, while the small number of people absolutely love you. There’s no sane reason why $200 million was spent on a bridge between two innocuous little towns in Alaska, but by securing it, the senator made himself very popular with the state, and assured their votes while $200 million off the Federal budget was barely noticed.
The only solution is to localise decision making to the area affected. If Alaskans want infrastructure, Alaskan taxes should pay for it. If Washington shrimp farmers want subsidy, then Washington taxes should pay for it. That way tax payers in those regions really feel the pain of subsidising public spending, while citizens of states which choose not to subsidise enjoy much lower taxes. The only tax and spend policies of central government should be those which affect the country as a whole (defence, for example).
I have a hunch we’d see lower taxes across the board.
Yeah, I miss Bill Clinton too. I miss those tax increases the most. I miss the 200 dollar haircut while he parked Air Force One at LAX. I miss those great Supreme Court picks. I miss turning the Lincoln Bedroom into a Motel 6. I miss the 4 day bombing of Iraq to cover up Monica-gate. I miss Monica-gate, now that I mention it. It was a lot more interesting then Abu Gharib thrown in my face. Good times man, good times.
What I miss about Clinton are the good old days of rampant corporate corruption. Enron did great under slick Willy, as long as they paid (remember that contract in India? remember how the Kyoto treaty was just what Enron wanted?). People conveniently assume that the only reason Enron cooked the books in 1999 was because Bush took office in 2001. It couldn’t possibly be linked to Enron’s bribes to Clinton a few years earlier - the timing’s all wrong.
As for reinstating farm subsidies that Clinton was phasing out - I’m totally against all the farm subsidies, but announcing big payouts now combined with a phase-out of future subsidies is an old Washington trick that the farmers never take seriously. Whenever one of these deals has been announced, if you ask farmers “aren’t you worried? in a few years, the subsidies will be gone!” they just shrug and say “the phase-outs never happen”. It’s not right, but it’s a distortion to blame the whole game on Bush and pretend that the reinstatement wasn’t expected all along under Clinton and wouldn’t have happened under Gore.
Bernard — Thanks for bringing up the points you did! I have to agree with you about localization of authority, including the funding — I called it it “Truth in Taxation” a while back.
And Ann, you are spot on about the Enron mess starting on Clinton’s watch … the problem is, the wealthists are blind to that fact. I don’t know if he did have anything to do with that … but still, somebody should call Michael Moore and let him cherry-pick THIS!
Let him look into Loral, too.
I was out at Halliburtion HQ earlier today, and I find it interesting that the Leftists protesting there have fewer signs regarding the “war for oil” meme … guess that doesn’t resonate as much since we turned Iraq back over to its people.
Of course, they might not like the sign I was carrying as I walked behind them, then past them along Belt Line Road …
HELP! I’M SURROUNDED BY AMERICA-HATING IDIOTS!
Sounds fishy to me
The Agitator brings up the subject of shrimp tariffs. The following are excerpts.
The Commerce Department ruled that Vietnam is too loose with its government shrimp subsidies and, therefore, is selling shrimp in the U.S. at artificially low cos…
“I miss Bill Clinton.”
Doesn’t that tell you you’re investing too much hope in politics?
“I still lean towards retaliatory trade measures when a foreign country subsidizes an industry with tax revenue, but that retaliation is only warranted if your own economy is a free market.
Your economy is not a free market if you impose “retaliatory trade measures”.
What most people never seem to get is that a government can only impose trade regulation on it’s own citizens. When you impose a tarrif on shrimp you’re hurting me, the consumer who wants less expensive shrimp, and you’re hurting the people here who would get it to me. We’re the ones the “retaliatory trade measures” fall upon.
Its been pointed out that if we alone ended our ag subsidies, Africa, for example, would benefit by several orders of magnitude over what we send them now as “foreign aid”. The African nations, in turn would then grow as markets for our other stuff– the stuff we DON’T have to protect and subsidize at the expense of our consumers and taxpayers– the stuff that might generate, you know– DECENT JOBS…
But last I looked, shrimpers in the USA tended to be piled up in the Gulf states… Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida… something tells me the free market and not pissing off a sensitive trading partner would be more important if we were talking about New England scrod…
I think we can expect more protective tariffs as needed for the next troubled industry in Swing Vote-istan… proponents of free trade should actually prefer Kerry’s record to Bush’s…
Talking, we should trust the free market credentials of the guy who has campaigned for months on a populist message that Bush ‘isn’t doing enough for American workers’?
Or should we be reassured by his running-mate who campaigned for the nomination on the basis that even Kerry wasn’t going far enough in challenging the free market?
Bush’s record on trading regulations is less than adequate, but I attribute a good part of that to an effort to head off a democratic rush for the moral low ground.
Sure, this kind of protectionism hurts both US and the foreigners. US customers buy more expensive shrimps and US shrimp farmers should be doing something else (improving the industry or moving on).
This is a text-book example on the dumping fallacy. One of the best article on this fallacy is on mises.org:
http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp?control=1551
This case is not about Free Trade its about “dumping” which is a clear violation fo Free Trade. The dumpers and their associates have wiped out one of the largest industries on the Gulf Coast of this country and something had to be done to rectify it. Just because Bush did it does not make it wrong, he took the right position on this one,
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what the hell?
Oh now, the ‘Nigerian’ scam is hitting blogs now?! Great
July 12th, 2004 - the days spam hit my favorite blog.
ooooo…that’s a lot of money. i’m gonna sign up.
“While import prices have plummeted to record lows, consumer prices are up as much as 28 percent,” he said. “The only U.S. groups benefiting from dumped shrimp are the middlemen.”
He said the American Seafood Distributors Association feel threatened because they have reaped enormous profits from dumped imports and would rather that the shrimping industry be destroyed than see their ever-expanding profit margins interrupted, having extracted $4.2 billion above normal profits from U.S. consumers in 2002.
These are the same people (ASDA) that are trying to tell you that consumers will pay a higher price for shrimp….Give me a break. Fisherman are currently averaging between 65 and 95 cents a pound for shrimp as of 7/21/04.
The American Shrimper has no chance at all!It’s a Dieing thing here in the States!Thanx alot for the trade!I must say tho::FRIENDS–Dont Let Friends EAT IMPORTED SHRIMP!!!!!God Bless The American Shrimpers!
Your arguments for wanting cheaper shrimp at the price of hardworking Americans are ridiculous. Get your lazy selves off your computers and realize that some people actually have to do manual labor for a living. You indeed sound like you miss Bill Clinton, who else could really stick it to honest working Americans? Do you buy Made-In-China American flags too?