Raising Prices

All That Have Not Fins and Scales: Imports are an abomination, according to domestic shrimpers by Kerry Howley:

Thanks to something called the Byrd Amendment, Louisiana's shrimpers will be much better off in a few months. The Amendment ensures that duties collected in anti-dumping cases will be paid directly to American producers. According to one nonprofit, that adds up to $1 million in payouts for each company involved in the case. Soon, you won't be subsidizing Big Shrimp; the third world will.

That may seem unfair, but the complex web of American trade law sustains yet greater absurdities. According to Deborah Long, an SSA spokesperson, the subsidies the SSA is so worked up about are not government subsidies, but developmental aid. In addition to the World Bank, that aid is provided by our very own US Agency for International Development. The U.S. government has slapped tariffs on third world nations as punishment for accepting U.S. assistance, and now some of that aid will be used to pay those tariffs, which will in turn end up in the pockets of American shrimp farmers. Washington could just write a check to SSA, but that would be protectionism. This, apparently, is anti-dumping...

Distributors say the anti-dumping hysteria isn't just bad for the far-off third world; it's bad for all of shrimp-scarfing, scampi-loving America. Wally Stevens, the president of the American Seafood Distribution Association, says the US trade czars lack the "common sense of a third grader." The ruling, he says, will threaten 20 times the number of jobs it protects. Distributing and serving shrimp is a much bigger business than fishing for it, and as prices inevitably shoot up, jobs will be lost.