There can be only losers in washing machine war

Bloomberg

To understand why President Donald Trump slapped a global tariff on washing machine imports rather than singling out offending countries, it helps to follow the years-long cat-and-mouse game between US officials and South Korean manufacturers LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics.
In 2011, US rival Whirlpool Corp. accused the two Asian companies of dumping machines made in South Korea and Mexico.
After the Commerce Department instituted anti-dumping duties in 2013, much of the work shifted to China, according to a fact sheet from the US Trade Representative. When a fresh US anti-dumping order targeted China in 2015, it was time to move on to Vietnam and Thailand, which in the past two years have become, respectively, the biggest exporters of washing machines into the US.
While the measures are aimed mostly at LG and Samsung, producers in other countries will be affected too. Germany’s BSH, which sells appliances under the Siemens and Bosch brand names, makes its washers for the US market in Germany and Poland, according to a spokesperson.
Swedish company Electrolux, which manufactures in Mexico for the US, will not be impacted by the decision, as it excludes machines with certain technical specifications, spokesman Daniel Frykholm said.
Samsung, meanwhile, has opened a US factory, while LG is building one. “It’s a very big industry, and you’re going to have a lot of plants built in the United States that were thinking of coming, but they would’ve never come unless we did this,” Trump said after signing the proclamation.
Germany’s electrical industry association was sharply critical. The tariffs “could trigger a downward spiral that ends up with only losers,” the group said.
“This cannot be in the interests of the industry or the consumer.”