We are pleased that the U.S. has rejected calls from China to grant special treatment to its dumped and subsidized exports….Today’s ruling is the right direction for American workers, but much more still needs to be done to bring about fair trade. For example, China imports most of its timber, yet there is still no real way to determine if the imported wood—which is used to make paper products exported to the U.S.—has been harvested illegally.

But he added that the action was overdue and the delay had cost U.S. workers their jobs.

Enforcing trade rules can make a difference in defending American workers’ jobs and the industries they work in….Unfair predatory trading practices have cost U.S. jobs by forcing mill closures and the shutdown of paper lines.

The USW and NewPage—which operates paper plants in Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota and Wisconsin with some 4,000 union members—presented extensive evidence earlier this year that China massively subsidizes its paper industry, allowing it to swamp the U.S. market with cheap imports, costing U.S. jobs and damaging the economy.

Figures from the USW show that this year there are more than 9,800 USW members at 22 paper mills that produce glossy paper in 13 states—a drop of 19 percent in just three years. The USW currently represents 130,000 workers in the paper and forestry products industries, a loss of some 60,000 jobs since 2002.

In the Indonesian case, the Sierra Club joined the USW and NewPage because the government allows logging companies to pay less than market price for timber from government-owned forests, allowing the companies to gain an unfair trade advantage. The USW and Sierra Club’s Blue-Green Alliance says that illegal logging produces artificially cheap fiber for use in paper products.

Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope says:

The U.S. Department of Commerce is finally taking a serious look at the impact that weak and poorly enforced environmental laws have on our economy. Illegal logging has devastating environmental and social impacts—accelerating global warming and increasing the risk of deadly landslides, but it is also depressing timber prices worldwide.

Dumping occurs when a foreign country sells a product in the United States at a price less than the cost of production. The dumping tariffs are meant to offset the unfair price advantage, while anti-subsidy duties offset the benefit of government subsidies the foreign paper producers enjoy.

However, duties will be finalized only if the U.S. International Trade Commission finds that the U.S. industry is materially injured or threatened with material injury by the dumped and subsidized imports.

While the move to level the playing field on paper products is a step in the right direction, there still is a long way to go to stop the damage done by bad trade policies with China.

According to a report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the U.S. trade deficit with China between 1997 and 2006 has displaced production that could have supported more than 2 million U.S. jobs. Most of these jobs have been lost since China entered the WTO in 2001. Contrary to the predictions of its supporters, China’s entry into the WTO has failed to reduce its trade surplus with the United States or increase overall U.S. employment, according to the report Costly Trade with China.

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