Dumping is pricing a export good below cost (and losing money), why would anyone do that?
In a move that seems likely to increase trade tensions, the Commerce Department plans to impose tariffs on solar panel imports from China, Keith Bradsher and Matthew L. Wald report. The tariffs are relatively small — 2.9 percent to 4.73 percent — but additional ones could be imposed in May, when the Commerce Department is to decide whether China is dumping panels in the United States. The department has already ruled that the Chinese government is providing illegal export subsidies to its solar manufacturers.
Dumping and providing illegal export subsidies can only help the U.S. consumer, the same consumer that is suffering from higher gas prices. Unless you use some dynamic argument that this temporary protection will afford the domestic industry time to achieve scale economies or savings from learning by doing. Both of these industry effects are speculative.
