Cold-Rolled Steel From China Slapped With 265% Anti-Dumping Duties

Metal Miner ^ | 3/2/2016 | Jeff Yoders

[mac_truck]

The Department of Commerce today announced its affirmative preliminary determinations in the anti-dumping duty investigations of imports of cold-rolled steel flat products from Brazil, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

In the Brazil investigation, mandatory respondent Companhia Siderurgica Nacional received a calculated preliminary dumping margin of 38.93%. The second mandatory respondent, Usiminas Siderurgicas de Minas Gerais, did not respond to all of Commerce’s requests for information, and therefore received a dumping margin based on adverse facts available. Usiminas and all other producers/exporters in Brazil also received a preliminary dumping margin of 38.93%. China Receives Heavy Duties

In the China investigation, no company responded to Commerce’s requests for information. Accordingly, all producers/exporters in China received a whopping preliminary dumping margin of 265.79%, based on adverse facts available.

[central_va]

Here what I am talking about dumping is not tolerated and illegal. If you favor that or participate in that then you are a traitor and possibly a criminal.

[xzins]

It is real cost, so it lowers the hopes of American suppliers in their efforts to get underpriced steel. It isn’t based on market reality. It’s based on currency differences. I was listening to one expert on a business channel a few days ago saying that the Chinese currency is at least half the value it should be at.

[MNlurker]

Never ceases to amaze me that people can throw around such BS when they have no idea who is really behind a name on an internet board.

[central_va]

There was a time, before the income tax, when tariffs and like taxes funded D.C.

Free Traitors in another better time would be decorating lampposts.

[jaydubya2]

The US has plenty of excess capacity. We are shutting down US mills becuase we can’t compete with the unfair pricing that China is charging.

[central_va]

And that was ended because of all the trade wars tariffs create including fueling real wars.

Took a while the switch from tariffs to income taxes took 120 years.

[central_va]

Domestic production will not make up for that.

Ok post facts on domestic rolled steel output and total capacity. Lets see you back up your BS statement. Is this how you FEEL about it? I wish Free Traitor™ dirt bags would do research before vomiting all over Jim's website.

[rey]

are we not free to buy what we want from where we want? I do not think they can completely crush US industry and if they do, when they raise their price, will not some one open another plant from the detritus of the industry? Don’t US manufacturers always raise their price to nearly match that of the foreign taxed item?

There are ways to beat this. The railroad industries were in brutal battles in the early part of the 20th century. One company was shipping cattle for nearly free to kill a competitor, very much akin to dumping. The competitor they were trying to kill went into the cattle business in a very big way and shipped all their cattle on the cut throat competitor’s lines and killed them.

[central_va]

Don’t US manufacturers always raise their price to nearly match that of the foreign taxed item?

The smart ones don't and increase market share.

[Read Write Repeat]

China claims “inferior product at a lower price isn’t dumping a market.”

[SubMareener]

Dumping destroys industries in the recipient countries, then the dumping country raises prices. Why do you think they call it the “Rust Belt?”

[jaydubya2]

China may claim that but their dumping has caused steel prices to crash.

[Carry_Okie]

I went and looked up the most recent information I could find. Here was the conclusion: We find only weak evidence (at best) that AD duties have positive effects on market power, a possibility that has been discussed in a prior literature. In my experience, it takes a big investment to select a supplier. It is not done just on price, but prompt delivery and quality. So in this "just-in-time" manufacturing world, when there is ANY kind of supply interruption or price hit like that, the layoffs are immediate until purchasing, manufacturing engineering, and incoming QC can dig out. It's just not worth adding value to an unknown raw material. It can kill you with customers.

With steel, small differences in modulus can result in different rates of "spring back" after forming operations, which then effects the fit of the final part into other assemblies. Add the cost of machining or painting before you find out and... the line stops until somebody figures it out. In this SPC world, that can take time and material. Hence the layoff. Needless to say, customers are affected. If that customer is an automobile producer for example, this is a huge hit that propagates all the way through the supply chain. It can mean the end of that customer relationship.

I don't know how much excess capacity there is in US mills, much less the skilled labor to man it. But I would hazard that after this long a period of dumping, a good many of those people are long gone and we won't be able to turn it up overnight.

Note: In NO case am I advocating tolerating dumping. I see it as a consequence of our loose fiscal policy that leaves us beholden to foreign bond holders. All I am saying is that implementing a remedy has consequences to which one must properly be sensitive. That usually takes industry knowledge to which government is typically not inclined. So even if I was going to slap a tariff on a country, I would find out what a reasonable warning period would be so that US industry could adapt without too many losses.

[Spartan79]

These "anti-dumping" tariffs will allow domestic steel producers to dramatically hike prices, which will simply be passed along to consumers. Domestically manufactured cars and a host of other products will become more expensive.

Of course, auto manufacturers in Korea, Japan, China etc. will not be paying these tariffs for rolled ssteel produced by their own nation's producers, so foreign auto manufacturer's will be able to undercut domestic auto manufacturers. GM and Ford sales will drop, foreign makers sales will jump - leading GM and Ford to clamor for protection.

The consumer gets screwed.

The primary reason for a tariff is that it enables the exploitation of the domestic consumer by a process indistinguishable from sheer robbery.

~ Albert Jay Nock

[factoryrat]

It will be interesting to see how the FRee traitors are going to spin this. Relying on cheap chinese government subsidized steel comes with its drawbacks. Of course, FRee traitors have no qualms with actively bankrolling communists, while blaming all of their problems on domestic manufacturers, unions, and regulations that they actually lobbied for. Privatize the profits, socialize the costs. Now the bill comes due for the FRee traitors.

I have no sympathy for them whatsoever, and neither do the millions of unemployed Americans that they dumped onto the welfare rolls.

[MNlurker]

Perfectly reasonable :)

Which these days makes you a lunatic ;)

You have to have a plan to deal with the steel and related industries as a whole. Being in the steel business I can’t get too excited about this because here’s how it will go:

- The dutied companies will either supply a fuller finished product using the CR steel they are being “blocked” from shipping

- They will ship it through a country not on the duty list and it will still find its way here. Amazing how I can go into a plant and see material “from Malaysia” when they don’t have a capability to make that steel in country.

- They will continue to sell it while waiting for the duties period to run out and then start dumping again. Then the steel industry has to start the lawsuits all over again.

Kabuki theater.

[free_life]

Not when tariffs are applied to foreign made cars.

[Carry_Okie]

Kabuki theater.

You can bet a Democrat donor made money on the bounce-around somewhere. Warren Buffett is famous for such shenanigans.

[ConservativeMind]

Up to 95% of all federal government funding was covered by excise taxes, starting from the late 1700s. Excise taxes still accounted for more than 25% of the federal spending in 1918.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excise_tax_in_the_United_States

[ConservativeMind]

I actually don’t have a problem with “dumping.” If Germany wants to give 320 million US citizens a BMW as reparation for WW II, I’m cool with that.