Non-Market Strategies, Corporate Political Activity and Organizational Social Capital: The US Anti-Dumping and Countervailing Duty Process

Corporate political activity (CPA) can be an important element in any firm’s effort to gain competitive advantage. This has been particularly true in the area of international trade, where domestic producers seek to bar or disadvantage foreign competitors in the home market though the imposition of trade protection. In the United States the imposition of anti-dumping duties (AD) or countervailing duties (CVD) is among the most popular policy demand made by firms, and as such is a focus of corporate political activity. This paper seeks to understand how and why some firms make more effective use of this process. It does so by drawing on social capital (SC) theory to illuminate the qualitative aspects of effective corporate political activity. Resilient trust between firms and their attorneys is revealed as a prominent aspect of effective CPA. The paper also adds to the literature by including foreign as well as US firms in the sample.