The Government Saves Us from Kosovar Mattresses

By Dominic Pino

Thursday, August 29, 2024

 

It has probably been keeping you up at night: Cheap mattresses from Kosovo are ruining the American economy.

 

Fear not! The International Trade Commission (ITC) has arisen from its slumber and has determined that the U.S. mattress industry has been injured by imports from Kosovo, India, Mexico, and Spain. That follows its determination from July 5 that mattress imports from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Burma, Italy, the Philippines, Poland, Slovenia, and Taiwan were also injuring U.S. mattress-makers.

 

The ITC determined that mattresses from those countries were being sold in the U.S. at “less than fair value.” It made this finding under the Tariff Act of 1930, more commonly known as Smoot-Hawley. The same tariff law that worsened the Great Depression can still spring up today when protectionists want it to.

 

These determinations came not as the result of any complaints from mattress customers. It was mattress-makers and two labor unions who filed petitions with the ITC in 2023 asking it to stop these imports. After further administrative processes, the ITC will impose anti-dumping duties, taxes on imported mattresses from these countries designed to be high enough to keep them out of the U.S. market.

 

As Bryan Riley of the National Taxpayers Union pointed out, the law forbids the ITC from considering the effects on mattress customers when making its determination of unfairness, and mattress-makers aren’t required to prove predatory pricing. “The process is designed to reduce competition and increase prices,” Riley said.

 

Despite the alleged decades-long dominance of “market fundamentalists” in the U.S., there is still a law from 1930 on the books that allows domestic producers to hire lawyers to write petitions to bureaucrats asking them to block competition from foreign producers without the interests of consumers ever once being considered.

 

Despite the supposed national-security justification for tariffs, this process is often used against U.S. allies, such as, in this case, five NATO members and Taiwan, the No. 1 target of top U.S. adversary China.

 

Despite the supposed need to protect “infant industries,” these injuries are to well-established U.S. firms who are fully capable of competing on their own. Yet we are supposed to believe that $137 million worth of mattresses from Kosovo, which has been an independent country only since 2008 and has a population of 1.5 million, poses so great a threat to the U.S. mattress industry that government intervention is required to level the playing field.

 

Protectionists talk a big game about the national interest, but when trade policy is actually made, it is often for special interests. In this case, the government is granting mattress-makers and two labor unions their wish to face less competition from abroad.

 

Our long national nightmare of cheap mattresses is almost over. Thank goodness the government is finally waking up to this threat. Now Americans can rest easy knowing that they won’t be allowed to pay too little for a mattress.