THE IMPACT OF UNFAIR TRADE PRACTICES ON THE IRAQI ECONOMY, PRICE DISCRIMINATION - DUMPING AS A MODEL

Abstract

Globalization has gradually removed the protection that existed to protect producers from unfair trade practices, as the case of imperfect competition within international trade is presented through a descending curve of average costs with an increase. Therefore, economies of scale are gradual. Often, some producers (the monopolistic firms) do not adjust the price relative to the index, and the change in prices for different consumers is called price discrimination. When speaking of the concept of international trade, dumping is the most common type of price discrimination in trade. Price practices are unfair when a country or company calculates a lower price for its exported products compared to the effects of goods and services sold locally. Therefore, it negatively affects the country's social welfare, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) allows such damage to be countered through trade defense instruments (TDIs). The commodity dumping policy, which increased through trade openness after 2003 in Iraq, led to a decline in the productive sectors, especially (the industrial and agricultural sectors), as most of the imported goods were of poor quality or counterfeit, which competed with local products and removed them from the market because of their low prices. Thus, this helped the exposure of the Iraqi economy to the outside world. The main objective of the research is to address the concept of unfair commercial practice in the reality of the Iraqi economy and to analyze the trade policy of neighboring countries, including combating commodity dumping and related legislation and price discrimination under the concept of monopoly.