US carbon and stainless steel maker AK Steel Holding Corp on Monday filed anti-dumping and anti-subsidizing complaints with the US government against Taiwan and several other countries over low-priced imports of non-oriented electrical steel, the Bureau of Foreign Trade said yesterday.
In its petitions to the US Department of Commerce and the US International Trade Commission, AK Steel said steelmakers in Taiwan, China, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Sweden have used predatory pricing strategies to sell their non-oriented electrical steel products in the US, the bureau said in a statement.
The anti-competitive practice has caused AK Steel’s US business to suffer, the company said, alleging that various government subsidies could be reasons behind the low-priced imports from Taiwan, China and South Korea.
In a statement released on Monday, AK Steel said imports of non-oriented electrical steel from the six countries accounted for 92 percent of the US’ total imports last year.
The head of the bureau’s international trade policy division, Tong Ming-huei (童明慧), said by telephone yesterday that the government does provide numerous subsidies for firms, including steelmakers, to help them save costs in buying land and equipment.
Tong said the Ministry of Economic Affairs would investigate if local steelmakers’ pricing led to unfair competition and review its subsidy and tax relief measures.
The government would also consult with local steel and iron makers to address AK Steel’s concerns, she said.
“AK Steel might have intuitively factored in every subsidy program or tax relief measure being implemented by Taiwan’s government to back up its accusations against local steelmakers,” Tong said.
“If necessary, the ministry will clarify its policies and will seek solutions to avoid local steelmakers being charged an anti-dumping tax by the US,” she said.
Among all the firms named in AK Steel’s complaints, China Steel Corp (CSC, 中鋼) exported the most non-oriented electrical steel products to the US on an annual basis, Tong said.
Last year, Taiwanese steelmakers exported US$17.24 million of non-oriented electrical steel products to the US, with CSC accounting for more than 90 percent of them, she said.
“CSC will cooperate with the government and participate in surveys as well as legal investigations,” CSC vice president Steve Lee (李慶超) said by telephone yesterday.
Lee said AK Steel’s accusation is “a bit surprising” because CSC does not export a larger volume of non-oriented electrical steel to the US than it does to other countries.
CSC produces a total of 600,000 tonnes annually of non-oriented electrical steel products and exports them to the US, China, Brazil and other countries, Lee said.
CSC’s non-oriented electrical steel exports — most of which are designed for high-specification electronics — totaled 25,000 tonnes a year on average, accounting for less than 5 percent of its total exports, he added.
Non-oriented electrical steel is mainly used to manufacture various sizes of motors, compressors, as well as transformers, Lee said.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS