Self-Protection: Antidumping Duties, Collusion and FDI

It is well established that the threat of antidumping duties can help sustain collusion between a foreign firm and its domestic counterpart. However, when the foreign firm is a multinational, its subsidiary will fight against a new duty, potentially making this threat hollow and collusion less likely. We show that the multinational may therefore choose to submit to a tariff even under collusion since evidence indicates that duties are more difficult to remove than initiate. In this way, it is possible to obtain a greater degree of commitment, although it comes at a cost. Nevertheless, we show that this can be a more profitable strategy than those previously explored. In fact, we find several cases where subsidiaries of multinational firms have indeed filed for protection from their own parents.