Bureaucrats or Politicians? Political Parties and Antidumping in the US

Tommaso Aquilante

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Antidumping (AD) is the most widely used contingent protection measure. In the United States, key decisions on AD are delegated to the International Trade Commission (ITC), an independent agency composed of six non-elected commissioners. Using a newly collected dataset, I study the determinants of all final ITC votes on AD during the 1980-2010 period. Contrary to the view that ITC commissioners are bureaucrats who simply follow technical rules, I find that their decisions crucially depend on which party has appointed them (the selection effect) and on the trade policy interests of key senators in that party (the pressure effect): whether (Democratic) Republican-appointed commissioners vote in favor of AD depends crucially on whether the petitioning industry is key (in terms of employment) in the states represented by leading (Democratic) Republican senators.

Keywords: Antidumping policy; Political parties (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 F10 F13 F14 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:70359

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