Last week, the United States applied a preliminary anti-dumping duty to Cold Rolled Coil (CRC) steel from the People’s Republic of China of up to 265.79 % in response to the uncontrolled rise of dumped products from the country. This is in contrast to the provisional 13 – 16-% anti-dumping tariff applied to Cold Rolled Flat (CRF) products by the EU in February of this year, which are insufficient to remedy or deter dumping from China.

“The high preliminary tariff set by the US demonstrates that the administration takes seriously the need to re-establish a level playing field for its domestic steel industry”, said Axel Eggert, Director General of the European Steel Association (EUROFER). “In contrast to the US, the EU continues to apply the Lesser Duty Rule (LDR) in its anti-dumping methodology. This cuts down the applicable anti-dumping tariff to a level that does not even address the injury to the industry, let alone actually deter dumping”, added Mr Eggert.

No other major trading partner applies the LDR as judiciously as the EU, and its use is not a WTO obligation. The LDR requires that the EU calculates a ‘dumping margin’ and an ‘injury margin’ and subsequently applies the lowest of these as the duty. Accordingly, in applying the LDR, the provisional measure for China was based on the calculated injury margin of a 13 – 16 %, rather than the calculated dumping margin of 60 %.

"The US vigorously re-establishes a level playing field for its domestic steel industry against massive Chinese dumping with anti-dumping tariffs of 265.79 %. Meanwhile, the EU again proves its inability to defend its strategic sectors, with tariffs as low as 13 % for identical products”, added Mr Eggert. “Such low anti-dumping tariff levels do not sufficiently capture the injury suffered by the European steel industry, making the continued application of the LDR unnecessarily damaging.

“In the present circumstances, continued member state opposition to the lifting of the LDR demonstrates that many EU governments are neglecting the impact the LDR is having on jobs and industry in their own countries”, concluded Mr Eggert.

Eurofer, Brussels, Belgium