Corrosion-resistant steel imports from China were sold at unfairly low prices and are to be taxed at 256 percent, according to a preliminary finding by the US Department of Commerce.
Imports from India, South Korea and Italy are to be taxed at lower rates, the agency said on Tuesday in a statement.
Imports from Taiwan and Italy’s Marcegaglia SpA will not face anti-dumping tariffs, it said.
The US government found dumping margins of 3.25 percent for most South Korean steel imports, with Hyundai Steel Co’s shipments subject to duties of 3.5 percent.
Imports from Italian companies excluding Marcegaglia are to be taxed at 3.1 percent, it said. Indian imports are subject to duties from 6.6 percent to 6.9 percent.
“We’re concerned that the dumping that’s occurring is at higher levels than these determinations reflect,” a law firm representing US steelmaker Nucor Corp said on Tuesday.
“We have serious concerns that these preliminary duties are not enough at a time when unfairly priced imports continue to surge into the US market at unprecedented rates,” said Tim Brightbill, a partner at the law firm, Wiley Rein LLP.
US producers including Nucor, US Steel Corp and Steel Dynamics Inc filed cases in June alleging that some products from Taiwan, China, India, Italy and South Korea had been dumped in the US, harming domestic companies.
Last month, the US government found that all those countries, except Taiwan, subsidized their domestic production by as much as 236 percent of its price.
Tuesday’s tariffs, combined with countervailing duties as high as 236 percent announced on Nov. 3, create a barrier to imports of these steel products from China, said Caitlin Webber, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence in Washington.
“A 500 percent duty is obviously prohibitive,” Webber said in an interview.
“The lower ones are much less prohibitive and would probably have a lower impact on imports,” Webber said.
US steelmakers have filed three sets of cases against imports of hot-rolled, cold-rolled and corrosion-resistant steel after deliveries from abroad surged. The price of hot-rolled steel coil, the benchmark product, is down about 40 percent this year, with domestic mills idling as much as 38 percent of capacity after imports climbed by 38 percent last year.
Imports of all steel products through October rose 3.9 percent this year.
The US Department of Commerce estimated that the value of imports of anti-corrosive steel — coils of the metal that have been coated with zinc or other treatments to prevent rust — from the target countries to be US$2.16 billion.
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