Price Discrimination and the Law

Both legislative history and enforcement practice suggest that domestic price-discrimination laws tend to be directed mainly at secondary-line or buyer-level injury. On the other hand, dumping at buyer level can only benefit the importing country’s domestic industry, which is thereby given the opportunity of purchasing its inputs at prices below those prevailing in the exporting country. At the same time, recent criticisms of domestic price discrimination laws, so far as they affect primary-line competition (at the seller’s level), apply with even great force to anti dumping legislation.