The Chinese steel industry has strongly condemned a US move to slap preliminary anti-dumping duties on steel gratings imports, and is likely to appeal against the measure.

The US Commerce Department said on Tuesday that it would impose duties
of as high as 145.18 percent on imports of steel gratings from China,
in a bid to offset “unfairly low” prices and help American counterparts
become more competitive.

The Department is expected to take a final decision on the matter next April.

The US government has accused Chinese producers of dumping steel
gratings at comparatively lower prices in the US market over the past
few years. This has hurt the local industry, it said.

The US imported 60,000 tons of steel gratings worth $91 million in
2008, up from 9,337 tons valued at $9 million in 2006, the Commerce
department statistics showed.

Chinese government data, however, indicated that the country exported
no more than 20,000 tons of steel gratings, worth around $20 million,
to the US in 2008.

“The US measure is unreasonable. The figures they provided are
incorrect,” said Wang Jianguo, a spokesperson of the Ningbo-based
Jiulong Machinery Manufacturing, a leading steel gratings producer.
“It’s nothing but trade protectionism. They are making up a story to
convince the world, but they are wrong.”

The company is set to appeal against the US government decision in January, although its spokesperson gave no further details.

Jiulong is the largest exporter of steel gratings, and a significant part of that goes to the US, Wang said.

In fact, Jiulong and Sinosteel are the only two companies to have
actively responded to the US government investigation. They were
slapped with much lower anti-dumping duties – of 14.36 percent – by the
US.

Since steel gratings do not form a big chunk of the exports of steel
producers, “the impact (of the measure) on Chinese exporters of steel
gratings is not that big,” said Yu Liangui, vice-director of the
Shanghai-based MySteel Research Institute, a major steel consultancy.
“But the concern is, many other (cases) will follow suit,” Yu said.

The US-based Alabama Metal Industries and Fisher & Ludlow had asked
the US government to investigate the matter in May this year.

Trade remedy cases against China have touched a record this year. By
the end of November, a total of 19 nations and regions had initiated
103 cases against Chinese imports, involving a total value of $12
billion.

The Chinese government too has more actively responded to the measures,
appealing to the World Trade Organization on some issues. This year,
the nation initiated eight anti-dumping and three anti-subsidy
investigations against other economies.

Source: China Daily

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