The US government agreed to investigate claims of unfair trade in stainless steel from China, three days after it imposed tariffs on the Asian nation for shipments of other types of metal.
US companies including AK Steel Holding Corp last month accused Chinese producers of unfairly subsidizing the metal’s production and selling it in the US at as much as 77 percent below its fair value, the US Department of Commerce said in an e-mailed statement on Friday.
The US International Trade Commission is to make a preliminary determination by March 28 of whether imports of the metal — valued at US$301.7 million dollars last year — have injured the domestic industry, according to the statement.
The case is the fourth that US steel producers have filed since June last year accusing foreign steelmakers of trade infractions. On Tuesday, the Department of Commerce announced tariffs of 266 percent on imports of cold-rolled steel from China and 39 percent on shipments from Brazil, among seven countries subject to anti-dumping penalties.
In December last year, the government found that China, India, Italy and South Korea had dumped corrosion-resistant steel in the US and levied taxes of 256 percent on imports from China. Other duties ranged from 3 percent to 9 percent.
Regulators had previously determined that hot-rolled, cold-rolled and corrosion-resistant steel from China and other trading partners had been unlawfully subsidized.
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