Posted on 29 Jul 2015
U.S. Steel Corp. and four other major steel producers accused China, India, Russia and five other nations of illegally dumping cold-rolled steel products in the domestic market.
The complaint filed simultaneously with the Commerce Department and International Trade Commission happens as the nation's steel industry is being battered by low prices, a surge of imports and weak demand from the oil and gas industry.
“We believe that American manufacturers can compete against any nation's products as long as the playing field is level,” U.S. Steel said in a written statement. “Unfortunately, other nations have mastered the use of illegal and market-distorting practices to take market share, suppress prices, and harm American producers.”
The filings by the steelmakers allege producers in China, India, Russia, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands and United Kingdom are hurting the domestic industry with unfairly traded steel imported to the United States. The steelmakers say the governments of Brazil, China, India, South Korea and Russia are providing “significant subsidies” to producers in their countries.
U.S. Steel was joined by AK Steel Corp., ArcelorMittal, Nucor Corp. and Steel Dynamics Inc. in the filing, which seeks to have antidumping duties imposed on the imports to counter subsidies.
Imports from the eight countries totalled 790,000 tons from January through May this year, up 44 percent from the same period last year, according to AK Steel. Last year, the countries exported more than $1.2 billion of cold-rolled steel to the United States.
The same companies filed a trade complaint in June accusing producers in China, India, Italy, South Korea and Taiwan of exporting unfairly traded corrosion-resistant metal to the U.S.
Steelmakers last summer won a dumping case against six nations, which were found by the International Trade Commission to have unfairly traded low-priced pipes used in the oil and gas industry. The Commerce Department implemented duties on oil country tubular goods from India, Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine and Vietnam.
