Seven U.S. steel makers and the United Steelworkers union filed petitions with the U.S. Commerce Department and the U.S. International Trade Commission seeking duties on Chinese imports of steel pipe.

« China’s steel industry has abided by the rules of the World Trade Organization since it joined the organization and we would never dump steel in any foreign market, » the newspaper cited Wu Xichun, a senior official with the China Iron & Steel Association as saying.

U.S. manufacturers allege that the mostly state-owned Chinese producers have sold supplies of the pipe at prices below the cost of production — a practice known as « dumping » — and have benefited from massive government subsidies.

Preliminary findings in the latest cases are expected in May, September and November.

Imports of steel pipe from China have soared in recent years, to 2.2 million tons — worth about $2.7 billion — of the roughly 5 million-ton U.S. market for the pipe in 2008. That was up from about 900,000 tons in 2007 and 750,000 tons the previous year.

European steel companies are also complaining over surging imports from China and the European Commission announced on April 8 it would impose anti-dumping duties on Chinese seamless steel pipe. On July 9 of 2008 the European Commission launched anti-dumping probe into the case.

China has protested at the European Union’s (EU) decision to impose anti-dumping duties of slightly more than 15 percent for Hubei Xinye Steel and Shangdong Luxing Steel Pipe  seamless steel pipes and  24.2 percent for the general imports from other Chinese steel companies,  expected the EU to end its anti-dumping investigation, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said in an online statement Friday (Apr 10).

The Chinese official  called  EU’s  attention that  according to the WTO rules, anti-dumping complaint must include accurate and adequate evidence of dumping, injury and a causal link between the two elements.

During the period of investigation, the whole industry in Europe performed well and experienced no injury or threat, the official added. He asses that the exports were  in response to market demand and any increase of exports of Chinese products to Europe during a certain period was determined by the market demand, which could not be attributed to dumping.

Source : Konaxis