Anti Dumping

India has imposed anti-dumping duty on Malaysian calculators for next 5 years.

What is anti-dumping duty?

Anti dumping duty is a tariff imposed on the goods manufactured in foreign countries and are priced below the normal value of the good in the domestic market. As in the goods are dumped in the through low pricing in the domestic country. The duty is imposed to save the local producers.

World Trade Organization(WTO) plays a vital role in reviewing the anti dumping measures. It doesn’t regulate the firms which are engaged in anti dumping activities however it looks after the measures adopted by the government.

In 2015, the steel manufacturing companies of US filed a complain against the Chinese steel companies that they were dumping the US steel market by keeping fairly low prices. A year later after analysis and public debate an import duty of 500% was imposed on the steel imported from China, benefiting the local producers.

Aren’t the companies like Uber, Ola, Swiggy, Zomato, JioMart, Amazon, Flipkart doing the anti dumping in the Indian market. The normal value used to be 200 bucks for some rides and when we see it 150 bucks in Uber, we feel good on saving the 50 bucks. Same case, for buying the grocery items and clothes on the e-commerce platforms. We feel delighted on savings where we are killing the small businesses at the same time, our own local producers.

I am not against those startups, obviously they are doing good jobs by delivering things at our door steps but they do it by burning cash so that we people become addicted to their platforms and stop supporting our small businesses.

Government can have policy to safeguard the interest of both the players until it is too late for one of them to survive.