Making it clear that all America’s flat-earth trade warriors are succeeding in doing is exporting jobs, Hosiden Corp of Tokyo has announced that it will stop exporting its active matrix liquid crystal displays to the US following the decision by the US International Trade Commission to impose swingeing 62.27% anti-dumping duties on such imports. Hosiden was able to end exports after its US customers led by Apple Computer Inc arranged to transfer laptop computer manufacture to to plants in Europe and Asia – Hosiden will continue to supply screens to these companies at their non-US factories. It exported $29m of active-matrix screens in 1990, 60% to the US: it expects exports to grow to $44m this year. An absurd quirk in the rules is that only the OEM screens attract the anti-dumping duties: once they are integrated as part of an imported computer the duties do not apply.
