RI joins other countries to fight U.S. trade policy

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia is joining other World Trade Organization (WTO) member countries to fight against U.S. government trade policy, which forces foreign companies accused of dumping to pay fines and transfer the millions of dollars of collected funds into the pockets of the affected U.S. companies.

Deputy director for international trade at the Ministry of Industry and Trade Alfons Samosir said that the U.S. policy was seen as moving against the ruling of the WTO.

"We (Indonesia) will work hard to battle against this policy because it will hamper our exports to that country in the future," Alfons said.

Indonesia submitted a verbal statement to protest the U.S.trade policy at the first WTO panel meeting debating the issue on Feb. 5 to Feb. 6 in Geneva.

Other protesters include countries from the European Union, Japan, Korea, Canada, Chile, India, Brazil, Mexico, Thailand and Australia.

The U.S. Congress passed the trade policy, popularly called the Byrd Amendment -- named after U.S. Senator Robert Byrd -- in 2000. It gives authority to the government to collect antidumping fines from foreign competitors and disburse them to the affected U.S. firms.

The controversial trade ruling was written with the steel industry in mind, and steel dominates the list of companies that have won trade complaints.

Antidumping is an action to stop the selling of goods at an unfairly low price on one foreign market.

Alfons said that protesting countries saw the trade policy as giving double protection to U.S. firms.

"We are afraid that the Byrd Amendment will encourage more U.S. domestic companies to use trade laws against foreign competitors, particularly from Indonesia," Alfons said.

He said that Indonesian items affected by the U.S. dumping policy included steel and rubber products.

However, he said that the Indonesian delegation at last week's WTO panel was not accompanied by lawyers due to a lack of money.

"We don't have enough in our budget to hire lawyers to accompany us during the panel meeting," he said.

Alfons said that the WTO panel was expected to hold a second debate over the disputed U.S. antidumping policy on March 12.