Dumping: Price Discrimination in Trade, Attitudes and Examples

What Is Dumping?

Dumping is when a country or company exports a product at a lower price than its domestic sale price. In the context of international trade, dumping is often considered an unfair pricing strategy. Because dumping typically involves substantial export volumes of a product, it often endangers the financial viability of the product's manufacturer or producer in the importing nation.

Understanding Dumping

Dumping is considered a form of price discrimination. It occurs when a manufacturer lowers the price of an item entering a foreign market to a level that is less than the price paid by domestic customers in the originating country. The practice is considered intentional with the goal of obtaining a competitive advantage in the importing market.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Dumping

The primary advantage of trade dumping is the ability to permeate a market with product prices that are often considered unfair. The exporting country may offer the producer a subsidy to counterbalance the losses incurred when the products sell below their manufacturing cost. One of the biggest disadvantages of trade dumping is that subsidies can become too costly over time to be sustainable. Additionally, trade partners who wish to restrict this form of market activity may increase restrictions on the good, which could result in increased export costs to the affected country or limits on the quantity a country will import.

International Attitude on Dumping

While the World Trade Organization (WTO) reserves judgment on whether dumping is an unfair competitive practice, most nations are not in favor of dumping. Dumping is legal under WTO rules unless the foreign country can reliably show the negative effects the exporting firm has caused its domestic producers. To counter-dumping and protect their domestic industries from predatory pricing, most nations use tariffs and quotas. Dumping is also prohibited when it causes "material retardation" in the establishment of an industry in the domestic market.

The majority of trade agreements include restrictions on trade dumping. Violations of such agreements may be difficult to prove and can be cost-prohibitive to enforce fully. If two countries do not have a trade agreement in place, then there is no specific ban on trade dumping between them.

Real-World Example of Dumping

In January 2017, the International Trade Association (ITA) decided that the anti-dumping duty levied on silica fabric products from China the previous year would remain in effect based on the investigation by the Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission that showed that the silica products from China were selling at less than fair value in the United States. The ITA ruling was based on the fact that there was a strong likelihood that dumping would repeat if the tariff was removed.

The Bottom Line

In the context of international trade, dumping is when a country or company exports products abroad at lower prices than that at which they are sold domestically. Though unsustainable over extended periods of time, the practice can give businessees an advantage in entering a new market. Many countries have policies in place to protect against dumping, such as tariffs.