Bloomberg: U.S. Steel Files Complaint Against Chinese Steel Pipe
The trade war may be esclating.
Bloomberg Reports:
By Mark Drajem
Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Steel Corp. asked the U.S. Commerce Department to impose dumping and anti-subsidy duties of as much as 90 percent on some steel pipe imports from China, five days after the Obama administration set tariffs on Chinese tires.
The petition was filed today with the U.S. International Trade Commission against $400 million in imports of pipes used in chemical, petrochemical, refineries and related operations, according to Roger Schagrin, a lawyer for the U.S. producers. The U.S. imposed tariffs this month on a different type of steel pipe from China in a separate case.
Analysts in recent days have said that Obama’s decision to impose safeguard duties on Chinese tires might encourage more industries to seek penalties against overseas rivals.
“What the tires decision has done is say that the White House door is open to protectionism,” Gary Hufbauer, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington yesterday.
Chinese officials responded to the tariffs Obama announced Sept. 11 by filing a complaint to the World Trade Organization and saying they will probe whether U.S. exports of automobile parts and chicken are unfairly subsidized.
“The Chinese are saying with their actions: If you do it again, we’ll hit you again,” Hufbauer said.
This case is different from the tire dispute because it will be decided by the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Commerce Department, not by the White House.
Seeking Duties
U.S. Steel, the largest U.S. based steelmaker, is seeking dumping duties of 60 percent or more, and subsidy duties of 15 percent to 30 percent, Schagrin said.
Indian and Mexican producers independently filed similar petitions with their governments against Chinese producers of the same product earlier this month, Schagrin said.
“This is not happenstance,” Schagrin said in an interview. “We’ve got a disease here, and it’s the subsidies and overcapacity in China.”
U.S. Steel was joined in the petition by the U.S. subsidiary of Vallourec SA, the world’s second-largest maker of steel tubes for oil and gas production.
Impose Duties
On Sept. 9 the Commerce Department decided to impose duties of as much as 31 percent on steel pipe from China, agreeing with American producers such as U.S. Steel Corp. that the imports were supported by unfair subsidies. The average duties on $2.8 billion in annual imports of the pipe, used in oil and gas wells, will be 21.3 percent, the Commerce Department said in a preliminary ruling.
Obama said on Sept. 11 that he will place duties of 35 percent on $1.8 billion of automobile tires from China, acting on a petition by the United Steelworkers union.