BOEING WANTS TO ROB AMERICAN CONSUMERS BECAUSE CANADIAN TAXPAYERS HAVE BEEN MILKED.

whining like a snowflake and compete if it can.

But there are arguments for Boeing too. Bombardier has also played the protectionist game. In practice, the old Quebec company looks more and more like a state corporation, benefiting from what Boeing’s petition calls “paternalistic industrial policies.”

Mind you, Boeing dutifully and naively repeats the “level playing field” mantra, whatever that means. In fact, selling below cost essentially means below the cost of a down prices. This market is thin, with only a few producers.

We have to look at the problem from the viewpoint of consumers and taxpayers, instead of the special interests of Bombardier and Boeing. If Canadian taxpayers are stupid (or dominated) enough to subsidize the American flying public, the latter should jump on the opportunity. Instead of seeking refuge behind the skirt of its Washington mother, Boeing should compete with market means. It should not to add insult to injury and rob the American consumer with tariffs because the Canadian taxpayer has been milked.

The rules of the World Trade Organization allow tariffs against dumping. In the United States, a domestic producer willing to pay US$1 million in lawyers’ fees can easily obtain an antidumping tariff just by showing that a foreign competitor charges less in the U.S. market than in its home market (another of Boeing’s complaints). But there are many good economic reasons to charge lower prices in one market than in another, such as charging less in more competitive markets or in markets where the elasticity of demand is higher, which happens all the time in domestic markets.

Douglas Irwin, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College who specializes in trade, writes that it is “hard to avoid the conclusion that (anti-dumping laws) are simply a popular means by which domestic firms can stifle foreign competition under the pretence of ‘fair trade.’”

We can understand why corporations take advantage of such laws (up to a point). The tragedy in this cronycapitalist system is that Bombardier and Boeing are incentivized to exploit their own countries’ taxpayers (through subsidies) and consumers (through protectionist measures) and to fight each other for the right to continue.