If you scroll through modern e-commerce apps today, you can buy a manufactured product shipped directly from overseas to Manila for a price that is mathematically lower than the cost of the raw materials required to make it.
Consumers call it a great deal. Macroeconomists call it "Predatory Dumping." 📦🛑
While Indonesia recently took massive, aggressive legal steps to ban certain foreign e-commerce transactions specifically to protect their local Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs), the Philippines has failed to effectively mobilize the Anti-Dumping Act of 1999 (RA 8752).
Backed by heavy state subsidies and incredibly cheap logistics networks, foreign factories are flooding the Philippines with ultra-cheap consumer goods. A local Filipino shoemaker or textile manufacturer simply cannot compete with a massive foreign factory that is legally allowed to operate at a loss. Our failure to enforce strict trade barriers creates a direct pipeline that extracts Filipino consumer cash while systematically bankrupting our own domestic manufacturing class.
