Major Japanese steelmakers said yesterday they planned to reduce exports to China in an attempt to persuade Beijing not to impose further emergency import curbs.
"China is a very important market which we want to keep," said Ryusuke Chiyonobu, spokesman for Kawasaki Steel Corp, the third largest steelmaker in Japan.
"We are planning to reduce the amount of exports to China with a hope that China will not impose full safeguard measures," Chiyonobu said.
"It is not yet clear exactly what China will do. But I think many companies in the [Japanese steel] industry are making efforts to avoid safeguard measures from China," he said.
The move by Japanese steelmakers follows China's decision to impose provisional safeguard tariffs in May on steel imports to protect its market. The decision followed the imposition in March of highly controversial US tariffs on steel imports.
China said in May its provisional measures would include tariffs ranging from seven to 26 percent, which would last 180 days.
Japanese steelmakers Tuesday declined to release their revised targets for steel exports to China.
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun financial daily estimated that they would collectively reduce China-bound exports by 30 percent in the September quarter from to the previous three months.
Japanese steelmakers said their decision to reduce China-bound exports was not due to falling demand in China.
China is Japan's second-largest market for steel products, following South Korea. The Chinese market accounted for 19 percent of Japan's steel exports in January through May.
Nippon Steel Corp was yet to make a concrete decision, "but we think we will reduce our exports to China in the near future," a company spokesman said.
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