Today, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced the initiation of new countervailing duty (CVD) and/or antidumping duty (AD) investigations of cold-drawn mechanical tubing from China, Germany, Italy, India, Korea and Switzerland.

“The Department will act swiftly to ensure that everyone trades on a level playing field,” said Secretary Ross. “The Trump administration is committed full and fair assessment of the facts and to the enforcement of America’s trade laws. We will defend American workers and businesses with every tool at our disposal.”

The petitioners, ArcelorMittal Tubular Products; Michigan Seamless Tube, LLC; PTC Alliance Corp.; Webco Industries, Inc.; and Zekelman Industries, Inc., filed a petition seeking relief from the effects of dumped and subsidized merchandise on the U.S. industry on April 19.

The estimated dumping margins claimed by the petitioners range from 12.00 percent to 209.06 percent. Regarding subsidies, Commerce has initiated investigations into 34 separately alleged subsidy programs in China and 32 separately alleged subsidy programs in India. Subsides are estimated to be above de minimis.

In 2016, imports of cold-drawn mechanical tubing from China ($29.4 million), Germany ($38.8 million), India ($25 million), Italy ($11.9 million), Korea ($21.3 million) and Switzerland ($26.2 million) were valued at an estimated $152.6 million.

Click HERE for a fact sheet on these initiations.

AD and CVD laws provide U.S. businesses and workers with an internationally accepted mechanism to seek relief from the injurious effects of dumping and unfairly subsidized imports into the United States.

Today’s action launches investigations that will determine whether Chinese, German, Italian, Indian, Korean and/or Swiss exporters of cold-drawn mechanical tubing have sold these products below fair value in the United States or, in the case of China and India, received unfair government subsidies.

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) will issue is preliminary injury determination on or before June 4. If it is affirmative, the investigations continue and Commerce is currently scheduled to issue its preliminary CVD determination on July 14 and its preliminary AD determination on September 26.

Should the Department of Commerce preliminarily find dumping and/or unfairly traded goods based on unfair subsidization, the Department will instruct U.S. Customs and Border Protection to collect cash deposits based on the preliminary AD/CVD rates from all U.S. companies importing cold-drawn mechanical tubing from the listed countries.

If Commerce and the ITC ultimately issue affirmative final AD and CVD and injury determinations, Commerce will issue AD/CVD orders. However, if either agency does not find dumping, unfairly traded goods based on subsidization, or injury, the investigation/s will be terminated.