WASHINGTON—A U.S. trade panel on Friday gave final approval to the steep duties on standard steel pipe from China, including the first aimed at offsetting Chinese government subsidies.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama praised the U.S. International Trade Commission's 5-0 decision, which he said was "the only responsible response" to China's "egregious and outrageous violations of fair trade."
The Commerce Department last month set a combined duty of around 700 percent on one major Chinese standard steel pipe producer and more than 106 percent on many other Chinese manufacturers and exporters.
"It's a prohibitive level because they were dumping and subsidizing to a very large extent," said Gilbert Kaplan, an attorney at the King and Spalding law firm that represented U.S. steel pipe producers in the case.
"That's how they went from 10,000 tonnes in 2002 to 750,000 tonnes in 2006. They were underselling U.S. manufacturers to an incredible extent," Kaplan said.
Beijing has indicated they could challenge the steel pipe decision at the World Trade Organization, "but I think we have a very strong case," Kaplan said.
The United States has imposed anti-dumping duties on a long list of Chinese goods that it said were being sold in the U.S. market at unfairly low prices.
But until recently, the Commerce Department would not investigate complaints that subsidies in China and other "non-market" economies were hurting U.S. producers.
That reflected the view that it was impossible to calculate subsidies in centrally planned economies like China.
The Commerce Department changed its position and agreed to impose countervailing, or anti-subsidy, duties in a case filed by U.S. coated paper producers in late 2006.
But the ITC refused give its final OK because it said the coated paper imports from China had not materially harmed, or threatened to materially harm, U.S. producers.
The Commerce Department has imposed preliminary countervailing duties on other products from China, but those cases have not reached the final ITC decision stage yet.
Standard steel pipe is used in plumbing, heating and irrigation systems and to carry water, natural gas, steam and other gases and liquids.
U.S. steelworkers, who blame Chinese imports for 500 job losses in the steel pipe sector over the past three years, said they were elated by the ITC vote because of the precedent it sets for other Chinese steel products.
"This is the first of many cases we're going to bring against China," Leo Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers union, told reporters.
The industry has already filed four cases—including the one decided on Friday—covering nearly 1.5 million tons of the 2.6 million tons of pipe that China exported to the United States last year, said Roger Schagrin, an attorney for the steelworkers union.
Feeds