THADD Retaliation?
The Chinese government has decided to levy anti-dumping duties on electric steel products imported from Korea, Japan, and the EU, said China's official Xinhua news agency on July 24.
According to the state-run Xinhua News Agency on July 24, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced on its homepage that it will levy anti-dumping duties of 37.3 to 46.3% on grain-oriented electrical steel (GOES) products from Korea, Japan and the EU. GOES steel is a core material for transformers or motors. The product is three to four times more expensive than general steel plates.
In the case of Korea, an anti-dumping tariff of 37.3% will be imposed on electrical steel sheets that POSCO of Korea exports to China and the same will go for other Korean companies, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said. As for Japan, JFE Steel products will face a 39% tariff while 45.7% duties will be levied on products of other companies including Nippon Steel Corp.
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce explained that they made the decision after they looked into such products produced in Korea, Japan and the EU and judged that the products were doing the Chinese steel industry damage through dumping.
This measure draws much attention, coupled with recent situations where countries around the world are reinforcing their protectionism, giving rise to trade disputes one after another. Recently the U.S. Department of Commerce also decided to put anti-dumping tariffs of 6 % to 34% on Korean-made cold-rolled steel sheets.
In particular, some industry watchers say that a much higher duty on Korean products only compared to that of a preliminary determination in April was introduced by China as part of China’s measures to get back at Korea for its recent decision to build the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system on the Korean peninsula. In April, the Chinese government announced in a preliminary determination that it will impose a 14.5% anti-dumping tariff on POSCO’s electrical steel plates. But this time, they finally more than doubled the rate. But the Chinese government finally adopted rates which were the same as those of preliminary determinations on Japanese and EU products.
“Recently the Chinese government imposed an anti-dumping tariff lower than that of a preliminary determination on Korean acryl fiber,” said a Korean government official about the Chinese government’s decision. “So it is hard to determine that the Chinese government took the strong stand due to the deployment of the anti-missile system.” The Chinese Ministry of Commerce decided to levy an anti-dumping tariff of 4.1% which was 2.0 point percentage lower than that of the preliminary ruling on acryl fiber produced by Taekwang, a Korean company during the final anti-dumping verdict on it in the middle of July.