The slow demise of the Byrd Amendment is final

The slow demise of the Byrd Amendment is final

On February 1, a bitterly divided US House of Representatives narrowly approved the Budget Deficit Reduction Act after the Senate had given its approval late last year in an equally acrimonious vote. Part of this bill is the repeal of the Byrd Amendment, also known by its formal name, "The Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act." However, since nothing works fast in Washington, especially when lots of money is involved, this bill will not expire until October 1, 2007. Until then, the US ball bearing industry, Timken in particular, and the US steel industry can look forward to hundreds of millions of dollars passed onto them in the form of dumping duties collected from their foreign competitors. By far the biggest payers of these dumping duties are the Japanese ball bearing exporters. As of October 1 of next year, these dumping penalties will be kept by the US Treasury Department and applied to reduce the budget deficit. Then the ball bearing and steel exporters to the US will subsidize the Federal Government's profligacy instead of Timken. Still, a positive ruling for free trade indeed.