BRUSSELS: The EU has ordered its customs officials to register imports of stainless steel manufactured in Taiwan and China, underscoring the bloc’s threat to impose tariffs on shipments from both countries.
The step is part of inquiries seeking to determine whether Taiwanese and Chinese producers of cold-rolled flat steel products — used in everything from cars and tanks, to boilers and kitchen equipment — sold their wares in the EU market below cost.
The probe is also looking to find if Chinese exporters received trade-distorting government aid.
The customs registration regulation would allow the 28-nation bloc to impose any future duties retroactively.
Trade protection in these cases is aimed at curbing competition for EU producers such as ArcelorMittal SA and ThyssenKrupp AG.
“Imports of the product concerned should be made subject to registration for the purpose of ensuring that, should the investigations result in findings leading to the imposition of anti-dumping and/or countervailing duties, those duties can, if the necessary conditions are fulfilled, be levied retroactively,” the European Commission said yesterday in the Official Journal.
The registration is scheduled to start today and go on for nine months.
The commission has until September next year to decide whether to impose five years’ worth of anti-dumping duties on steel shipments from Taiwan and China, as well as anti-subsidy levies on the Chinese-made goods.
Meanwhile, the commission must decide by late March whether to apply provisional anti-dumping duties and by mid-May whether to introduce preliminary countervailing levies.
The EU market for stainless steel cold-rolled flat products last year was worth about 5.5 billion Euros (US$6.9 billion), with imports from Taiwan and China valued at 620 million Euros of that total, European steel industry group.
