I happen to know a thing or two about unfair business practices (I posted a novel to the thread on whether or not you have to be evil to become really wealthy, the general consensus (IMHO) was, “No but it helps”). The only reason a company would lower its own prices to below its own production costs would be in the hopes that all their competition will die out and they will then be able to gouge the hell out of everyone ad infinitum. Once you’ve driven a few startups into bankruptcy new entrepeneurs find other businesses to compete with, at least until the courts step in and set things right. This was done frequently in the past and is the reason we have anti-trust laws.
In regard to the “dumping” of steel it is a somewhat different matter. Many nations learned a cruel lesson during WWII (the first highly mechanized war involving tanks, airplnes, jeeps etc.), that if a nation does not have a strong domestic steel industry when a major war breaks out then they will be at a severe disadvantage to the nations (like Germany) that have one. At time of war you can’t count on being able to import enough steel to build 10,000 tanks, 50,000 jeeps, 5,000 airplanes etc. Therefore, some nations highly subsidize their blatantly inefficient steel mills. Having no immediate use for so much steel they then sell it to countries like the USA who are willing to import steel (most countries have much higher import duties than the US, we are an exporter’s dream marketplace). The practice is called dumping because a country produces endless tons of something they have no use for and then “dumps” it on some other country. IMHO we need to start charging the same sort of import duties that other nations charge to insure a strong domestic industry (not just in steel but in everything). If we need more labor than is curretly available then I say import the labor don’t export the jobs. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, DON’T EXPORT JOBS. We exported the entire textiles industry to places like Red China and it has made them strong, strong enough to bribe their way into their current favorable trade status and create a 50 billion dollar trade deficit.