The U.S. antidumping law, according to its supporters, ensures "fair trade" by offsetting market distortions caused by foreign governments. Specifically, it allegedly targets "unfair" pricing practices--price discrimination and below-cost sales--that reflect protectionism, cartelization, subsidies, and other structural defects in foreign markets.

Years of analysis has proven that there is a disconnect between the rhetoric of antidumping supporters and the reality of antidumping practice. The law as currently written and enforced does not reliably identify price discrimination or below-cost sales.

Furthermore, the law lacks any mechanism for determining whether the pricing practices it condemns as unfair have any connection to market-distorting policies abroad. Although price discrimination and below-cost sales can result from government interventionism, they can also be due to perfectly normal marketplace behavior. Consequently, the antidumping law frequently punishes foreign firms for unexceptionable business practices routinely engaged in by American companies.