Representatives of the US, Canada, the EU, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, Switzerland and Turkey agreed that urgent steel industry restructuring was imperative and must be market driven, according to a joint statement released by the US Department of Commerce.
They also agreed that their governments should not provide subsidies or other support that sustain loss-making steel plants or encourage additional capacity.
In a separate statement, US officials said they would continue to lobby for action on steel with trade partners.
“It is our shared goal that other economies, including China, will come to recognize the value of these actions and will join our collective effort to address the causes of the current excess capacity problem,” US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and US Trade Representative Michael Froman said in a separate statement.
“The United States will continue to engage bilaterally and multilaterally with trading partners, including China, to take meaningful action to meet that goal,” they said.
A meeting of ministers and trade officials from more than 30 countries, hosted by Belgium and the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on Monday, concluded only that overcapacity had to be dealt with in a swift and structural way.
Washington pointed the finger at China for the talks’ failure, saying Beijing needed to cut overcapacity or face possible trade action from other countries.
However, Chinese officials said Beijing was already taking sufficient steps to curb capacity, while Xinhua news agency said blaming China for the global steel industry crisis was a lazy excuse for protectionism that would be counter-productive.
“It is the slow recovery of the world economy that causes sluggish demand for steel products, which further leads to the overcapacity issue in the steel sector,” Chinese Ministry of Commerce Assistant Minister Zhang Ji (張驥) told Xinhua on Tuesday.
The Chinese government has taken the most concrete measures and is paying enormous price to cut overcapacity, Zhang said.
Beijing is also aiming to boost domestic steel demand from major consumers including the automobile and machinery sectors and drive the use of high-value added steel structures in infrastructure, he said.
China reported record production last month.
The OECD said global steelmaking capacity was 2.37 billion tonnes last year, but declining production meant only 67.5 percent of that was being used, down from 70.9 percent in 2014.
