The U.S Department of Commerce on Friday made a decision to impose almost 60 percent of antidumping duties on hot-rolled flat steel exported by Korean companies. Now that the U.S. commerce department has made a final decision on the duty rates following preliminary determinations earlier on in the year, the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) is expected to give a final judgement on the decision whether U.S. steelmakers that had raised complaints in 2014 have been affected by anti-dumping and various subsidy support.
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The department has set anti-dumping and countervailing duties for POSCO products at 3.89 percent and 57.04 percent, respectively, for a total of 60.93 percent duties.
“As we think the USA anti-dumping measures unfair, we plan to take legal action after reviewing them”, said a POSCO official on August 6.
The decision is expected to deal a blow to the Korean steel industry, heavily dependent on the US market.
The Brazlian government has threatened to challenge the USA duties before the World Trade Organization. The commission is due to make a decision by late September on whether steel imports have damaged local producers. POSCO accounts for 75 to 80 percent of Korea’s annual export of hot-rolled steel sheets to the USA which stands at some 1.2 million tons. American steelmakers argue that prices are plunging below cost due to a global supply glut and that foreign steelmakers are dumping products to the US, which is the only market generating stable demand. “There is every incentive in the world for foreign producers to ship product -dump product – into the United States”, said Richard Blume, general manager of USA steelmaker Nucor Corp “Basically, they are exporting their unemployment to the U.S”.
Park, however, anticipated that the exports would not entirely stop, as 70 percent of the concerned steel to the U.S.is sold from the joint corporation UPI.
Instead, they said the lower prices were due to falling demand for oil drilling pipe, lower raw material costs, and shipping bottlenecks that caused West Coast industries to turn to Asian suppliers.
Last month the USA also slapped 64.7 percent tariffs on Korean cold-rolled sheets and 48 percent on stainless steel. Posco was slapped with 64.58 percent duties while Hyundai Steel with 38.24 percent.
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Meanwhile, POSCO said it would consider bringing the tariff case to the World Trade Organization.
