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BY ANDREA HOLECEK
holecek@nwitimes.com
219.933.3316 | Thursday, December 29, 2005 | (No comments posted.)
Reaction to Congress' action repealing the Byrd Amendment depends on whether U.S. companies and their competitors are exporting or importing their products and the materials needed to manufacture them.
The Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act, aka the Byrd Amendment, was axed when the final budget bill passed the Senate on Dec. 21 by a 51-50 vote, with Vice President Dick Cheney casting the tie-breaking ballot.
The amendment, which has been ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization, allows companies that the International Trade Commission determined were hurt by imports priced below their cost of production to collect a share of the tariff revenues paid to the U.S. Treasury.
About $1.26 billion, with the majority going to steel-related companies, has been distributed to U.S. companies in various industries affected by the imports judged unfairly priced since 2000.
The Senate and House versions of the spending bill still need to be reconciled. However, the House already has approved the amendment's repeal, making its demise almost a certainty. If signed by President Bush, the Senate version of the bill delays the amendment's repeal until Oct. 1, 2007, after which anti-dumping duties will revert to the U.S. Treasury.
Andrew Sharkey III, president of the Washington-based American Iron and Steel Institute, reportedly was disappointed by Congress' action, but stated the fight to stop companies from selling dumped and subsidized merchandise won't end.
"We are hopeful that the administration and those in Congress responsible for this provision will ultimately come to recognize the very real injury suffered by American manufacturers, workers and farmers from repeat dumping," Sharkey was quoted as saying in news reports. "If foreign producers did not insist on exporting dumped and subsidized products to the United States after orders have been imposed, there would be no Byrd money to distribute."
Leo Gerard, United Steelworkers International president, said the repeal "is a chilling message to workers."
"U.S. workers don't have a fighting chance when their own government keeps giving away the tools that seek to even the playing field," he said in a statement. "Repeal of the Byrd law in the budget bill will accelerate the predatory practices of foreign competitors who are subsidized by their own governments to unfairly dump products in America."
But organizations representing steel importers, such as the American Institute for Imported Steel, applauded the repeal.
"AIIS applauds the efforts by Senate and House leadership and the steadfast support of the Bush Administration to repeal this law," said Dave Phelps, the organization's president.
"We believe that this is an important victory for steel consumers and for the international trading system, which ruled in 2002 that the Byrd Amendment is WTO-illegal."
The Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition, a coalition of U.S. businesses that buy imported products, praised the Senate vote. "This is a great victory for U.S. consuming industries," CITAC Executive Director Steve Alexander said. "We also will continue to track Byrd Amendment disbursements in future years to underscore the importance of repealing this trade-distorting law."
Times Wire Services contributed to this story.
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