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Japan hit on steel dumping
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June 11, 1999: 12:10 p.m. ET
ITC orders duties on imports of hot-rolled steel from Japan
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - The ongoing trade war over imported steel went to the next level Friday when the U.S. International Trade Commission slapped anti-dumping duties on hot-rolled steel products from Japan.
The independent panel voted 6-0 in favor of a complaint brought by U.S. steel makers and workers who charged Japanese companies with selling steel in the U.S. below fair market value.
The decision means importers of Japanese hot-rolled steel must pay anti-dumping duties ranging from 17.86 percent to 67.14 percent of the value of the imports. The duties are retroactive to Feb. 12, when the Commerce Department made a preliminary finding that Japan was dumping steel.
The hot-rolled steel case was one of a number of steel anti-dumping cases brought by the U.S. industry and labor unions in response to a flood of cheap imports last year that they said was hurting the industry's bottom line and forcing job cuts.
Since last September, the U.S. manufacturers and labor unions have been engaged in a campaign to publicize the import surge in order to pressure the White House and Congress.
Taking sides
The U.S. petitioners consisted of Bethlehem Steel Corp. (BS), USX-U.S. Steel Group (X), Ispat International NV (IST), California Steel Industries Inc., Gallatin Steel Co., Gulf States Steel Inc., Ipsco Inc., Steel Dynamics Inc. (STLD), the Independent Steelworkers Union and the United Steelworkers Union.
A group of U.S. steel companies and labor organizations issued a statement Friday saying the "ITC decision is a further step in the process necessary to end the crisis in the steel industry."
The Japanese Steel Information Center issued a statement of its own, calling the ITC finding "unjustified, ill-considered and counterproductive." The organization maintained that the problems facing the U.S. steel industry in 1998 were the result of dramatic, short-term shifts in domestic demand, not imports, which, the group said, are already disappearing.
The story thus far…
Tom Abrams, an analyst at Credit Suisse First Boston, said the steel trade battle can be traced to 1996-97 when Asian producers were adding a lot of capacity and forgetting about demand.
Then the Asian flu and the global liquidity crisis hit and steel producers all over the world had more inventory than they could handle.
"I think the United States was the only market in the world where could sell steel," Abrams said. "Everybody else was retrenching. It was a desperation moment."
Abrams said the big inventory bulge has slowly been absorbed.
"Prices around the world are slowly moving up," he said, "meaning our imports will go down. Our prices are still higher than most other people's, but they're not moving up in a vacuum; they're moving up with everybody else's."
-- from staff and wire reports
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