Chinese Aluminum Goes to WTO (at last)

In the Wall Street Journal today is the story of one of those hard-working people who has decided to take a stand on aluminum being dumped by the Chinese, and go to the World Trade Organization to take up this travesty.  We can sure tell it is the silly season when some of the top Democrats in Congress decide they want to clamp down on China for something they have been doing for the last five years. Elections do that to them.  However, we should not look a gift horse in the mouth.

An article by the Aluminum Insider, says the current duties on Chinese aluminum have been in effect since 2011, so their must not be hurting anyone in China very much.  I'm at a loss to say what those figures are, since the formula for calculating this kind of thing is mysterious and complicated.  All we can say for sure is there are duties.

Along the way of enforcing these duties comes another story of even greater consequence.  Fortune says while the U.S. has lost 600 jobs with the closing of the Alcoa smelter, the Chinese were stockpiling $2 Billion in aluminum in Mexico trying to get it into this country without paying the duties on their aluminum coming from China.  We have to wonder how long they managed to pull that off.  Ingots of aluminum seem to all have pretty much the same look to the casual onlooker like me, so they could be doing that in every one of their friend's businesses all over the world.

So, it turns out that leaders who are concerned about the message being spread by voters seems to indicate Congress is not doing enough, does something to appear to be doing something.  What it is doing could have been done five years ago.  What the Chinese have always done when confronted by WTO is to back down, turn around, and come back another way.  Green Dam has just come back after a layoff of a few years.  Aluminum exports will not be far behind a temporary setback of WTO saying "don't do that" to them.  Vigilance is essential to keeping them from doing it.  Congress is far too patient.