EU imposes new ADD on Chinese steel products

The Dollar Business Bureau 

EU Commission took stern action against China, one of the world’s largest steel makers, for swamping the EU markets with steel, flouting international trade agreements. 

EU imposed a new anti-dumping duty of 35.9% on China’s hot-rolled flat steel generally used in energy pipelines, shipbuilding, gas containers, tubes, pressure vessels etc. EU Trade Commissioner, Cecelia Malmstroem speaking to the media said, EU is trying to protect its struggling steel producers and stop unfair trading practices. “We are continuing to act, when necessary, against unfair trading conditions in the steel sector, and against foreign dumping,” Malmstroem said in a statement. 

EU has had a series of standoffs with China over trade but is also looking to resolve them through the OECD. The Commission found that Chinese businessmen, benefit from various practices like tax rebates, preferential lending and other ways of financial help that allow them to sell their steel products at very low rates thereby swamping the markets with them. 

Earlier in January, the EU had slapped ADD on stainless steel tube and pipe butt-welding fittings from China. Brussels now has more than 100 trade measures in place out of which 15 are directed towards the unfair Chinese steel imports.

In response to the Commission's imposition, Chinese government termed the benefits system that its businesses received as a misunderstanding of its financial loan system by the EU and replied, “The European Commission ignores the fact that China’s steel exports to Europe clearly declined in 2016, using China’s steel overcapacity as an excuse to claim that China’s hot-rolled flat steel products threaten to damage industry in the EU when that is mere speculation with little bearing on reality,” the Chinese commerce ministry official Wang Hejun said in a statement on Friday."

The Chinese government also strongly condemned EU's ruling and questioned its legitimacy. Hejun said, “It is biased and unfair for Europe to blame China for its own industrial issues. Unjustified accusations and reckless trade rescue measures will not help to solve the problem.”