The way countries around the world, faced with downturns in their respective economies, are placing import curbs on metals or finished products, it almost seems to be a tit-for-tat battle.
Over the last three years, the U.S., some European nations, and India, China and South Korea, on the other side of the globe, have periodically imposed or increased duties to curb cheap imports.
At the start of this March, as reported by MetalMiner, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced its affirmative preliminary determinations in anti-dumping duty investigations of imports of cold-rolled steel flat products from Brazil, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the U.K.
While China received a previously unheard of preliminary dumping margin of 265.79%, based on adverse facts available, the India respondent to the investigation JSW Steel Limited/JSW Coated Products Limited got off relatively lightly and received a preliminary dumping margin of 6.78%. All other producers/exporters in India received a preliminary dumping margin of 6.78%.
Apart from steel, the US aluminum industry, too, of late, has increased its efforts to address China’s overproduction capacity and the resulting glut in the global market. The “China Trade Task Force,” a cooperative effort between smelter Century Aluminumand the United Steelworkers union, have been working to slow imports of cheap Chinese product for some time, but now the industry trade group the Aluminum Association is speaking out more forcefully.
And before you could say aluminum, the Indian government, a few days ago, proposed raising the basic customs duty on the metal by 2.5% in a bid to protect local producers from cheap imports. To be fair, though, to India’s government, the proposal is part of the country’s 2016-17 union budget, so it was not a sudden, knee-jerk move, but a carefully thought out proposition in the wake of increasing demands by local producers.
Basic customs duties were proposed to be hiked on primary aluminum from 5% to 7.5%, and on aluminum products from 7.5% to 10%.
Source: agmetalminer