To have to keep making the same obvious point and find it being continually ignored. Still gird the loins and keep stating the truth I tell myself.
Europe's biodiesel producers will today urge the European commission to levy punitive duties on US rivals after Brussels launched formal anti-subsidy and anti-dumping investigations into imports from America.
I've said it often enough before: if someone is willing to gouge their own taxpayers in order to provide us with cheaper goods then the correct response is to say thank you. Followed by an invitation for them to do the same tomorrow as well. To do otherwise is to be protectionist: protectionist of the interests of business above those of the consumers and that really isn't the way we're supposed to be playing the game. But in this report we see it even more nakedly:
Garofalo said that "splash and dash" accounted for only 10-15% of the biodiesel imported into the EU. "The real problem remains US biodiesel producers," he said. "Changing the rules to stop splash and dash doesn't change a lot as export subsidies will be maintained for US producers and that's precisely what we want to stop."
Garofalo is the head of the European Biodiesel Board, the trade organisation for producers. It is exactly as Adam Smith said all those years ago:
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
There it is, plain as day. Garofalo wants you to be barred from purchasing the best offer so that his members might make more profit. That US taxpayers are subsidising that best offer is an irrelevance to your and my interests. The correct response to someone offering us subsidy in this manner is thank you, please call again.
Whatever the interests of Garofalo, the EBB and the producers.
