cens logo

U.S. Imposes Antidumping Duties on Taiwan's Steel Pipe Exporters

2014/08/04 | By Steve Chuang

The International Trade Administration (ITA) of the U.S. Department of Commerce announced on July 11 its final decision to impose antidumping duties on Taiwan's steel pipe exporters along with counterparts from the other seven OCTG (oil country tubular goods) making countries, including S. Korea, India, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey and Vietnam.

The imposed duties range from 2.05% to 118.32% depending on magnitude of damage to local suppliers.

The antidumping case was filed in 2013 by American steel manufacturers against steel pipes imported from the eight countries and Ukraine for illegally being dumped into the U.S. to damage interest of local suppliers. After nearly a year of investigations, ITA finally decided on the countries for antidumping duties, sparing the Ukraine.

In addition to antidumping penalties, the ruling states that exporters from India and Turkey are subject to countervailing duty of 19.11% and 15.89%, respectively.

The ruling will severely hammer steel pipe exporters from the eight countries, particularly Korea, which exported US$818 million of OCTGs to the U.S. as the largest supplier last year, that is subject to antidumping duties of 9.89%-15.75%. Imported steel pipes from the other seven countries amounted to US$722 million.

Taiwanese OCTG suppliers involved in the case include Shin Yang Steel Co., Ltd., Chung Hung Steel Corp., Tension Steel Industries Co., Ltd. and Far East Steel Enterprise Corp. among others, whose overall exports totaled some 110,000 tonnes valued at nearly NT$3 billion (US$100 million) to command about a 5-6% share of the U.S. market last year.

The United States International Trade Commission (ITC) is scheduled to finally decide on the case by the end of September, to impose duties on these foreign suppliers if it finds OCTG exporters from the eight countries guilty of coercion and damaging local suppliers. (SC)