Posted on 25 Apr 2019
US steelmaker Nucor is positive that the US is going to win a wide-ranging trade case against structural steel imports from Canada, China, and Mexico, Kallanish learns from the company’s first-quarter earnings call.
In late March, the US International Trade Commission found evidence of injury as a result of imports of fabricated structural steel products from the targeted countries. Two of these are tentative signatories to the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
“We are optimistic that we will get a positive outcome in the final determination. I will tell you that this could be very good news for us...we sell about 50% of our beam, structural products into our fabricating businesses. That's about 1 million tons a year that we sell into fabricated steel construction, and it hurt - we're hurt on demand, it hurt on pricing and we think that that's a result of truly dumped and illegally and unfairly traded products coming in.”
The case, brought by the American Institute of Steel Construction, alleges dumping margins of 30.41% from Canada, 222.35% from China; and 30.58% from Mexico. All targeted countries are also alleged to have subsidy plans in place.
The total value of the goods under investigation reached $1.9 billion in 2017. A preliminary dumping determination is slated for 15 July, and a preliminary subsidy determination is set for 1 May.
