Hi Jodi,
Its to stop the triggers firing when you restore the new database from
the dumped file.
Imagine that the triggers have already done their work on other tables
when the data was first inserted or
later changed.
With pg_dump you are taking a snap shot that you would later wish
perhaps to restore.
The foreign key, table and column constraints are not turned off because
their enforcement is still valid at restore time. For example the
data may have mysteriously been damaged in the database or in the dump file
and you would thus need to know about this situation at restore time.
The dumped file is thus copied back at restore time not inserted.
Regards Mark Carew
Brisbane Australia.