... so it should come as no surprise that other US industries / unions are now echoing the tire complaint !
(snip)"On the eve of the G20 meeting, three paper companies and the United Steelworkers filed an antidumping complaint against Chinese and Indonesian paper makers.
Coming less than two weeks after the U.S. slapped tariffs on Chinese tires and China responded with tariffs against U.S. auto parts and chickens, many are worried that protectionism is rearing its ugly head.
The odds of a trade war remain low but are "starting to inch up," says Greg Ip, U.S. economics editor at The Economist.
The paper complaint is a long way from becoming a formal sanction, Ip notes. But "the thing on tires Obama did was very troubling," he continues. "Essentially, he could have said ‘no' and he said ‘yes'. He's going to invite a lot more complaints of this nature."
Ip's concern, shared by many economists, is that if the economy remains weak, Obama is going to come under pressure from various labor groups to impose sanctions on a variety of other goods.
"If unemployment stays high and workers are still struggling a year or two from now, you're going to get more protectionist pressures," Ip says. "It's going to be hard for the administration to say ‘no' when it said ‘yes' this time."
Obama's critics say the tire tariffs were expressly done to pander to unions, whose support the White House needs to push through health-care reform - and maintain Democratic majorities in the 2010 mid-term elections."(snip)
from
This should get extremely interesting as various other US industries also bring complaints based on alleged Chinese 'dumping'. It will get even more interesting to see which of these complaints Obama acts on or ignores.



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