The case of honey produced in Argentina, for example, made headlines this week. With typical imperial arrogance, U.S. treasury secretary Paul O'Neill said last summer of Argentina: "They don't have any export industry to speak of at all. And they like it that way."

Despite O'Neill's claim, Argentina has become the world's leading exporter of honey over the past decade, selling nearly 90,000 tons a year to foreign markets. Until recently almost half of it was going to the United States. In November, however, in response to complaints of dumping by U.S. honey producers, the Commerce Department placed a tariff of up to 66 percent on Argentine honey, effectively shutting it out of the U.S. market.

Nicholas Sargeantson, president of Sunland International, an importer of Argentine honey based in New Canaan, Connecticut, said the Commerce Department ruling illustrates "the immense hypocrisy of U.S. trade law."

"On the one hand, the U.S. advocates to the world to tear down trade barriers," he said, "but on the other it has these wonderfully convenient dumping laws which enable domestic producers to bring a case against foreign suppliers any time they see competition they don't like."

"This always happens," commented José Ignacio de Mendiguren, Argentina's minister of production. "It happened with lemons too. Whatever Argentina is capable of exporting we know that the United States will administer its own trade in such a way as to be able to protect its own producers at our expense."

We couldn't have said it better ourselves.  
 
 
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