Death By a Thousand Paper Cuts
Though beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, injury is not. A bloodied nose, a foreclosed home, the loss of health insurance are all clearly harmful events.
For a paper-making company like NewPage Corp. of Dayton, Ohio, the loss of 20 percent of its business - especially to a competitor who's cheating - is an injury. The 2,300 United Steelworkers who lost their jobs at American mills making glossy paper since 2004 as Asian companies dumped their wares on the U.S. market at below cost suffered injury.
Somehow, however, in a Clintonian legal parsing of the word "injury," the U.S. International Trade Commission failed to see the injury here.
In a 5-1 decision last week, the ITC abolished anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties imposed earlier this year on glossy paper imported from China, Indonesia and South Korea because it determined the U.S. industry "is neither materially injured nor threatened with material injury" by the imports.
The ITC did not dispute the impropriety, or possible illegality, of subsidies that foreign governments provide to Asian paper companies, only that those subsidies resulted in harm to American paper companies. Establishing harm is necessary to impose duties.
So, American worker, here's what the Bush Administration and the ITC are saying to you: it's okay that the Chinese, Indonesian and South Korean governments provide their countries' paper companies with subsides covering up to 44.25 percent of the cost of the paper, a calculation made by the U.S. Commerce Department earlier this year. It's just fine that Chinese companies sold their glossy paper in the U.S. at nearly 100 percent below the fair market value and at prices cheaper than they would sell the paper in China. (Let's make this clear: they pay to ship it across the Pacific to the U.S., then sell it for less than what they hawk it for on the mainland.) And it's perfectly dandy that the Asian companies sold the paper at prices that were lower than their manufacturing costs - a practice commonly called dumping.
By contrast, when the U.S. Commerce Department looked at this case earlier this year, it didn't seem to think those practices were consistent with fair trade.
NewPage filed a complaint with Commerce about the subsidies, and the United Steelworkers joined with the paper company seeking relief from the unfair foreign competition. Later, the Sierra Club and the USW asked Commerce to investigate whether Indonesian paper companies benefit from an unfair subsidy by making high gloss paper from trees illegally logged in Indonesian forests that are being stripped at alarming rates by what amounts to modern day wood pirates. It is, of course, cheaper to make paper from stolen trees.
The Commerce Department decided China, Indonesia and South Korea were breaking the rules and imposed the anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties on glossy paper imported from those countries. The surcharges made the imported glossy paper more costly, giving American companies and workers a fair chance to compete for the business. After a preliminary decision in the spring, the Commerce Department decided Oct. 18 to make the duties permanent.
Then, within a month, the ITC turned that upside down.
The international law firm of Vinson & Elkins represented the Chinese government and several paper companies. A partner at the firm, Daniel L. Porter, told the New York Times, "The ruling sends a message to industries clamoring for tariffs to make sure they can show they are injured from imports."
Show that injury! Cough up some blood, America! Prove you're not faking it! Just because you've lost 20 percent of your business, laid off 19 percent of your workers, watched imports rise 177 percent, and documented foreign competitors charging prices lower than it costs to make the paper, that's not reason enough to believe there's real, like, suffering or something!
Maybe the actual pain starts when 30 percent of the business is lost and 29 percent of the workers furloughed. Maybe it's 40 and 39 percent. Only your ITC knows for sure.
And so the American paper industry will suffer death by a thousand cuts with the full consent of the Bush Administration and the ITC. First goes the glossy paper bit by bit, then newsprint or copy stock or whatever the Asian companies want. Each cut, so small, the ITC contends, it's painless. No injury. Apparently it's never suffered a paper cut.
Apparently the Bush Administration and the ITC have never conceived of what America will be like when all her paper mills are silent, when she's unable to make anything anymore because all of her paper, furniture, clothes, computers, shoes, pet food, toys, appliances, all of her everything, is made in China. Some with a little hidden gift of toxic lead. The nice thing about lead poisoning is that it makes you stupid, so you won't even know you've suffered an injury. So it will be a win-win for the ITC.
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The real wealth and prosperity of a nation can only be measured by what it produces, not by how many product ideas a fraction of the nation's researchers can ship off to be produced in some other country. No amount of business or government propaganda that asserts the contrary can change that fact.
In America, we gave manufacturing a low social status, compared to more glamorous fields. Then we kicked manufacturing out of the country, for short term corporate profits. Now manufacturing is done in countries that previously needed our charity. Soon we will hold out our hand for their charity.
If you read the news, you'll be aware that the countries we outsourced our production to, are now buying their old customers and/or doing their own research and design work. They are not merely cogs in a manufacturing process - they are intelligent human beings.
Not a single TV set or radio has been made in the USA for many decades. India is selling tractors here (Mahendra). IBM sold their PC business to Lenovo (China). There are only two US owned disk drive companies (Seagate, the largest in the world and Western Digital) - and both manufacture offshore. Now, a Chinese company wants to buy Seagate. Where will our military buy computers and other electronics in case of conflict or political tension with our supplier countries - China, for instance?
Neither a country nor it's citizens can be prosperous if its economy is based on McDonalds employees selling to Walmart employees, and vice versa.
Here is a scary thought?
What if this is intentional?
China believes that Taiwan is a renagade province. The only reason China has not sent military forces to reclaim Taiwan is the fear of US retaliation. China has made great advances in every front that I would work on if I were China and needed to be able to fight a war with the US.
They are working on Desiel-electric subs and swarm attack missiles to fight our ships.
They are working on spacecraft to match our surveilance abilities, and recently tested an anti-satellite weapon to deal with our sats.
They have invested in industries and companies that are crucial to our defense, and oddly enough are getting advanced technology from the companies they are buying.
They bought up our debt, and now can manipulate our currency better than the Fed.
Now they are selectivly putting companies out of business, and sending deadly drugs and toxic toys to poison us.
Our currency is falling-I don't know if there is a Chinese connection, but they could do it if they wanted.
Did they declare war on us and we didn't notice?
The worst is yet to come....
Have you wondered or stopped to think about the BIG 3...Ford GM Chysler and how much per hour they pay people to do unskilled work.
On average...
an air wrench to bolt on parts on crap cars/trucks/vans.
No wonder the work is going overseas.
$25 per hour plus pension ..hahahaha
"Apparently the Bush Administration and the ITC have never conceived of what America will be like when all her paper mills are silent, when she's unable to make anything anymore...
You could have put a period after ""Apparently the Bush Administration and the ITC have never conceived.
We are in no position, thanks to Bushonomics, to refuse the Chinese anything.
If the Chinese start pulling out of their dollar investments, and US treasury bonds, our economy will tank. Another not so Great Depression.
As bad as this is, we do the same thing with our exports.
For example, we subsidise the corn industry to the extent that we can dump it on the market in Mexico at below cost.
This cause alot of starvation in Mexico. Farmers could not compete and stopped growing corn, a staple for the Mexican diet. How could they continue to grow corn only to sell it at a loss, year after year?
This put alot of rural people out of a job, and they headed north so they could make a living.
Karma is a b*tch. Blowback is a b*tch, too.
Silly Americans are bitchin' about lowly immigrants doing dirty jobs nobody else wants.
Meanwhile back "at at the chinchilla ranch" China is cheating and stealing hundreds of thousands of AMERICAN JOBS in the free-for-all OUTSOURCING economy approved by Bush-Cheney.
When will Americans notice that China is not only poisoning toys and products sent here, but also
destroying our jobs economy?
Worth mentioning that Vinson & Elkins were the main law firm for Enron.... same game, different stage
I work in one of the few factories left in our once great nation. We are only running the plant one to three days a week (why do you think I have time to browse HuffPo during business hours? I have nothing else to do, as I sit here at my desk.)
Earlier today, I saw an advertisement, where a store is selling a product like ours AT LESS THAN THE COST OF THE MATERIALS! Forget labor and overhead! Guess what - they're made in (you guessed it!) China.
D'ya think the corporatists care? The big boys are selling crap they get in China for a song, then sell it here WITHOUT PASSING THE SAVINGS ON TO THE CONSUMER. Our prices are a half, even a third, of what you would expect to pay for one of the Wall Street brands, and we have better warranties because our quality is as good AND OFTEN BETTER than the models the corporatists carry. The corporatists give no better than 10 year warranties on any model, and less on many. We fifteen year warranties on many models, and a ten year warranty on all but two of the lesser models (one is built under contract to one of the big chains, and the contractee insisted on an eight year warranty. Have it your way, but if you hadn't demanded an eight year warranty, we would have given you ten, dumbass corporatist!)
And yet, here I sit, at my desk "working" late (read: got nothing else to do tonight, may as well stay here and see if I can scare up a sale). Why? Well, Madison Avenue has convinced you that if it isn't a big brand name, then it's crap. You've never heard of our brand, therefore, it's crap, right? The reality is, we are selling American-built goods at a third to half of what you would pay for Chinese made junk, and we use no lead at all in our products. Can you say that about the crap you just bought from China, and not us?
There seems to be quite a bit of high-handed
fiddling having to do with manufacturing, imports, exports and stuff, and while global
trade by itself isn't really an all-out threat,
it's still noteworthy to remember that, in a
hypothetical time of trouble, it'd take a while
to start things up again. I don't think that
outsourcing all our manufacturing is either
wise or, for that matter, really feasible,
at the same time, when a lot of people around
the world are working, there might be a little
less cause for war. Having things the way they
are means exposing our economy to foreign risks
though, the mortgage issue was a good example
of how the 'butterfly effect' can have a massive
impact on our economy, as well as the economy
of other countries, and that not all that takes
place in the name of globalizationer is necessarily wise or beneficial. They've been
running our economy flat-out for a while,
and the people driving the train want MORE.
Well, Prescott Bush was a go-getter, and he
went and got in some hot water about his foreign
investments, and they had this little thing
called WWII in there, somewhere, some guy
named Hitler, and all that. But hey,
globalization? Go right ahead...
I'm sorry but this is a good thing. I've worked at papermills and they are very dirty and extremely bad for the environment. They use tons of nasty chemicals and dump them in our rivers. Not to mention that they cut down trees from our National Forests to make this paper. We shouldn't even buy virgin paper anymore but if we have to it would be better to buy foreign paper rather than destroying our domestic environment
The Bu$h Misadministration isn't concerned since it doesn't negatively affect them. Creating a two tiered society with themselves on top is all that counts.
It's funny how no one talks about foreign TVs being dumped in this country. Why? Because THEY'RE ALL MADE OVERSEAS. The dumpers won. All I can say is: here we go again.
The approach that you need to be taking is to hammer this thing as a Homeland Security issue.
"Paper and steel as homeland security?" Yeah, hear me out.
For a country to rely completely upon imports as what is effectively its own economically-viable source of a particular fundamental commodity ... and both paper and steel are such ... is to put that country and its economy at risk for the intentional use of that economic dependency as the functional equivalent of a military weapon.
Any business enterprise will be driven by a cost/price motivation above all; it has no choice but to choose "We Sell For Less, Always." But it is precisely for this reason that we must constantly be sure -- by tarriffs, by trade penalties and so-on -- that an outside competitor cannot wipe-out the entire domestic industry.
This will become more and more important to the extent that this country continues to be belligerent in world-affairs: at the moment even now it cannot truly afford to do so. If a foreign businessman, for "purely business reasons," decided to keep even a single ship at home, our "just in time" systems would begin to fall-apart with incalculable consequences. We should not assume that everyone we trade with is always, nor is always going to be, "a nice guy."
So hammer this: "by doing this you are putting our country at risk by the terrorists
Waitaminute. The Bush administration doesn't bow to the edicts of international organizations! Why are we paying any attention to the ITC? Who died and made them the United Nations?
If the USA has to depend on what it exports the country would collapse which is what is happening now. The demise of a country starts with a shock devaluation of its currency to make what it exports more attractive. However, with the exception of agricultural products, which are government subsidized, the only thing that the USA adds value to is weapons. Weaponry is our main export and it is also government subsidized. The U.S. taxpayer gives Israel $500 for each Israeli citizen, in foreign aid. That's how Israel is able to create tennis centers in virtually every town in Israel, courtesy of the American taxpayer. Also, tennis centers have pro tennis players conduct clinics at these American taxpayer paid tennis centers. You can't blame the Israeli's because we are a country of gullible, ignorant fools. They would be the fools for not taking advantage of US taxpayers and let's face it given the choice we would all prefer taking advantage of fools rather than being a fool. The Old Testament book of Psalms has a lot to say about being a fool and it's not gracious or flattering.
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