The protectionist tendency is in the ascendancy again in Brussels, and the European Commission says it is investigating charges that firms in Hong Kong and Korea were flooding the European Community market with cut-price computer floppy disks, creating unfair competition for Community manufacturers; the complaint made by Diskma, which provided information meriting a formal inquiry, the Commission said, noting that it was alleged that companies in Hong Kong and Korea had dropped their sale price in the Community by around 50% between 1988 and 1990, boosting sales more than six-fold from 1988 to late 1991 at the expense of local manufacturers; the Commission is already investigating similar charges against floppy disk makers based in Japan, China and Taiwan; any ruling of dumping will be particularly contentious because the companies’ sales in their home market are too small to be used as a yardstick in setting fair value.
