European steelmakers called on Monday for EU anti-dumping action against imports from China, Taiwan and South Korea, which they claim are flooding the European market at unfair prices.
The European steel and iron confederation Eurofer said it had filed two dumping complaints with the European Commission targetting cold-rolled, stainless flat steel from China, South Korea and Taiwan and galvanized products from China.
"Both complaints are filed on the basis of evidence showing that dumping of the products concerned is causing material injury to the European steel industry," Eurofer said in the statement released on Monday.
GRIEVANCES
A second complaint would be lodged next week against Chinese-made wire rods and a fourth complaint was also being prepared in the coming weeks targetting heavy plates, Eurofer director general Gordon Moffat said.
European steelmakers accuse producers mainly in China but also Taiwan and South Korea of selling their products in Europe at below the cost of production, in what is known as dumping.
As a result, European producers were losing market share and keeping facilities idle as they were undercut by up to 25 percent in the European market.
INVESTIGATION
After receiving a complaint, the Commission then has 45 days to decide whether there are grounds for launching an anti-dumping investigation, which could lead to corrective measures such as import duties.
Moffat was confident that the European Commission would prove sympathetic to the European industry's cause.
"It's clear that the Commission sees there is a problem with China and recognizes that probably the trade defense instruments are the only way to resolve the problem," he said.
TENSIONS
The case risks opening a new front in trade tensions between the EU and China and the Commission has said it would be careful to weigh both the interests of EU steel producers and consumers eager to buy cheaper steel.
The European engineering industry, which consumes two thirds of the steel produced in Europe, is opposed to action against imports and industry association Orgalime said it would study Eurofer's complaints.
"If increasing quantities of certain steel grades are finding their way into the European market, it is clear that this is because of demand in the EU is on the rise, while output is not able to keep up," Orgalime head Adrian Harris said.
"Our companies are therefore finding it ever more difficult to buy steel locally in the quantities and qualities they need at competitive conditions," Harris said.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
MANAGING DIFFERENCES: In a meeting days after the US president signed a massive foreign aid bill, Antony Blinken raised concerns with the Chinese president about Taiwan US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and senior Chinese officials, stressing the importance of “responsibly managing” the differences between the US and China as the two sides butt heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues, including Taiwan and the South China Sea. Talks between the two sides have increased over the past few months, even as differences have grown. Blinken said he raised concerns with Xi about Taiwan and the South China Sea, along with China’s support for Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, as well as other issues