Posted on 09 Jun 2016
Japan will call on India and Vietnam to remove what it deems improper barriers to steel imports -- a problem that has grown more common as countries attempt to weather massive Chinese overproduction.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry put the two countries on notice in its annual report on trade agreement compliance, released Wednesday. India in September slapped a 20% additional duty on hot-rolled steel sheet, used in car bodies and elsewhere. Vietnam began in March imposing additional tariffs of 14-23% or so on goods such as semifinished steel products and steel bar for use in construction.
The global steel glut, which originated in China, is behind many of the new measures. Chinese makers' crude-steel production capacity surged 60% between 2008 and 2014. Domestic consumption failed to keep up as economic growth slowed, flooding the global market with low-cost surplus products.
The U.S. and European Union have enacted anti-dumping measures to cope with the situation, levying tariffs of more than 200% on Chinese steel imports in some cases. Japan has not yet taken such measures, placing a higher priority on having its partners' safeguards removed. These barriers to exports are thought to have a greater impact on Japanese steelmakers than cheap Chinese imports.
Some efforts at removing safeguards have proven successful in the past. Ukrainian barriers to automobile imports, singled out in last year's compliance report, were removed in September in line with arbitration by the WTO.
