Peachy the Magazine October November 2014 | Page 120

Last Man Standing he wanted the battle to be fair. With the arrival of the Dalian dresser, JBIII knew he was up against a pernicious opponent bigger even than his own gumption. The dresser was a Chinese knock-off of a Vaughan Bassett piece which cost $235 to make in Galax. The Chinese were wholesaling it for $100. JBIII knew the government-subsidized firms in China were selling products in the U.S. for less than they cost to produce in China—“dumping” in a brazen attempt to do nothing less than destroy American furniture manufacturing. JBIII had his hackles up now, retreat was not an option, and he took on a range of roles in order to combat this lethal and very present threat. He became a first rate sleuth, traveling to China in the guise of an importer, as he, his son Wyatt and a Taiwanese liaison Still Making It In America, a co-production of The Roanoke Times and Equal Voice News. Video by Ryan Loew. 118 PEACHYTHEMAGAZINE.COM named Rose sniffed out the remote production facility for the Dalian dresser near the North Korean border. He also became well-versed in esoteric trade law and, with the help of handsomely paid King & Spalding lawyers, discovered the legal redress for dumping: the Tariff Act of 1930 and the godsend Byrd Amendment, which put the duties awarded not in the U.S. Treasury but in the coffers of the injured companies. Perhaps the most remarkable role JBIII took on was as a charismatic industry organizer who had an uncanny ability to mobilize a fractured cartel and lead one of the largest anti-dumping campaigns ever waged against China. It turns out JBIII was a born general who, had he been reared a generation earlier, just may have given Patton a run for his stars. His fervent leadership is all the more remarkable when one considers the fraught milieu in which he was operating, as garnering the troops proved much more exacting than one might think. He needed to have 51 percent of his industry sign the petition, and yet many of those he was soliciting had already closed their plants and become importers and thus were actually benefiting from the dumping discounts, as were the retailers who were JBIII’s customers. Many