US tariffs on steel prompt wide retaliation
By Guy de Jonquières in London
Published: October 22 2002 0:24 | Last Updated: October 22 2002 0:24
news.ft.com
The US decision to impose tariffs of as much as 30 per cent on steel imports in March has triggered a chain reaction of moves by other countries to protect their steel markets, new trade figures show.
US trade partners responded to the tariffs by opening 96 emergency "safeguards" investigations into steel and metal imports in the first nine months of the year, according to a study by Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, a US-British law firm.
That raised the number of all such investigations during the period to 116, more than twice last year's total and more than the total during the previous seven years. Safeguards are temporary measures intended to check actual or expected import "surges".
The sharp rise in activity coincided with a fall in antidumping investigations, long the most common type of protection measure against imports. Only 103 such investigations were initiated in the first half of this year, compared with 348 during the whole of last year.
The study said safeguards, which cover all imports of a product, were becoming more popular because their use by the US and other big trade powers had lent them "respectability".
Until recently, safeguards actions have been rare, because they require higher standards of proof than antidumping cases, which are more narrowly targeted at individual producers.
Canada, Chile, China, the Czech Republic, the European Union, Hungary and Poland all opened safeguard investigations into a range of different steel imports after the US did so last year.
The US has since exempted a number of products from the tariffs announced in March. The EU has also relaxed some of its measures, while some of the other investigations launched this year did not result in import duties being imposed.
The latest figures underline the growing popularity of antidumping policies in developing countries, which initiated about two thirds of all investigations worldwide in the first half of the year.
India opened 26 cases, more than any other country, and Argentina, Peru and Thailand were also active. The US initiated 22 investigations but the EU, once a leading user of antidumping measures, opened only eight.
Imports from China and the EU were the two biggest targets of other countries' investigations, but only two were opened against imports from the US. Almost 80 per cent of all investigations were into steel and chemicals.
Worldwide antisubsidy investigations fell sharply from 27 last year to four in the first half of this year, all of them opened by the US or EU. |
