US agency won’t slap additional duties on shipments of PH steel

The United States International Trade Commission (USITC) announced that shipments from the Philippines of certain steel pipes and tubes used in the oil industry were not sold at a lower price in America, hence the products must not be slapped additional duties.

In a statement issued Aug. 22, the USITC said that following its year-long investigation on the alleged dumping of tubular goods from eight countries, it determined that the US steel industry was “not materially injured or threatened… by these products from the Philippines and Thailand.”

As a a result, the United States will no longer issue anti-dumping duty orders on imports from Manila and Bangkok, the USITC said.

During last week’s vote, USITC chair Meredith M. Broadbent, vice chairman Dean A. Pinkert, and commissioners Irving A. Williamson, David S. Johanson and Rhonda K. Schmidtlein found no reason why the shipments from the Philippines and Thailand should be slapped with additional duties, the agency disclosed.

But the same could not be said for the shipments from India, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine and Vietnam. The USITC said that the US Department of Commerce found that that steel products from the these countries “materially injured American manufacturers.”

The tubular goods imported from the six countries had been sold at less than fair value or at cheaper prices in the United States.

USITC also found out that the steel products from India and Turkey were being subsidized by their respective governments.

The US agency decided to slap anti-dumping duties on the shipments of oil country tubular goods from South Korea, Taiwan, Ukraine and Vietnam. Those from India and Turkey will be levied both anti-dumping and countervailing duties.

The USITC ruling is a reversal of the US International Trade Administration (ITA) decision last month to require Philippine exporters to pay a cash deposit for shipments equal to at least 9.88 percent or the weighted-average amount by which the normal value exceeds the US price.

The provisional anti-dumping duty was based on the ITA’s earlier determination of a weighted-average dumping margin of Philippine imports worth 9.88 percent during the period July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013.

Philippine-based exporter HLD Clark Steel Pipe Co. Inc. was the respondent to the US government’s dumping and countervailing investigation.

Last year, nine American steel manufacturers—Boomerang Tube LLC, EnergeX (a division of JMC Steel Group), Maverick Tube Corp., Northwest Pipe Co., Tejas Tubular Products Inc., TMK IPSCO, United States Steel Corp., Vallourec Star L.P., and Welded Tube USA Inc.—sought anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations on the eight countries plus Saudi Arabia, claiming that the shipments had affected US producers.