Abstract

This study traces the misguided attempts to protect three U.S. high-technology industries through the use of anti-dumping laws: supercomputer, flat panel television screens, and DRAM computer chips. The most important lessons learned from these analyses are that in at least two of the three high-tech sectors, one of the following negative consequences occurred. : (1) costs to U.S companies and workers far outweighed benefits of the anti-dumping protection; (２）political interventions undermined the integrity of the administrative and legal processes; (3) dumping actions were based on historically erroneous notion that each of the industries was "strategic," or central to overall U.S. competitiveness; and (4) appearance of new technologies made irrelevant the original anti-dumping actions. The study concludes with recommendations for the reform of U.S. anti-dumping laws, including; folding anti-dumping laws into competition policy laws; adding a nation economic interest test to decisions about where to protect U.S. producers with anti-dumping orders; and substituting safeguards actions for anti-dumping actions, and suspending all anti-dumping actions after safeguards protection is granted.