EU Says China May Be Dodging Levies on Corrosion-Resistant Steel

(Bloomberg) --

The European Union threatened to widen tariffs on corrosion-resistant steel from China, saying Chinese manufacturers may have shipped “slightly modified” versions of the product to dodge the duties.

The EU opened an inquiry into whether Chinese exporters of this kind of steel, which is used in the construction industry and for domestic appliances, altered the characteristics to avoid the levies as high as 27.9%. The trade protection is meant to punish producers for allegedly having sold in the EU below cost, a practice known as dumping.

The EU imposed the anti-dumping duties for five years in February 2018, targeting exporters such as Hesteel Co. and Angang Steel Co. in a bid to prevent European competitors including ArcelorMittal from facing unfair price undercutting.

The probe stems from “sufficient evidence” that the levies “are being circumvented by slight modifications of the product concerned,” the European Commission, the EU’s trade authority in Brussels, said on Tuesday in the Official Journal. These include, for example, applying a thin oil-coating, increasing the content of carbon or changing the coating, according to the commission.

As part of the investigation, which will last as long as nine months, the commission ordered EU customs officials to register imports of versions of Chinese corrosion-resistant steel. Registration will allow the bloc to impose duties retroactively on these shipments should the probe conclude that Chinese exporters sought to circumvent the anti-dumping duties.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Stearns in Brussels at jstearns2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Zoe Schneeweiss, Peter Chapman

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.