A U.S. investigation has begun into unfairly priced imports of tin plate from China, Canada, Germany, and five other countries. The product is the sort used to make canned foods, including seafood. The investigation follows a petition from a mining company and a trade union. The tariffs preliminarily imposed range up to 123% depending on the country but may change after the final investigation.
In the United States, by WTO rules, such investigations are jointly carried out by the Commerce Department, which measures the extent of dumping (selling below cost) and subsidy (aid from government in the foreign country), and the International Trade Commission, which examines the extent of injury to a domestic industry producing a similar product. Both agencies must find in the affirmative (finding the unfair act and finding injury from the act) before import tariffs are set. Each investigation has two stages, preliminary and final. The preliminary stage ends with a preliminary finding of an appropriate import tariff, before a longer and more involved final stage.
In this case into alleged dumping of tin plate a preliminary tariff has been imposed on tin plate imports from China, Canada, and Germany only; imports from the five other countries (South Korea, Netherlands, Taiwan, Turkey, and UK) were found in the first stage to be not unfairly traded. The preliminary tariff levels imposed are 123 percent for Chinese tin imports, 5 percent for Canadian imports, and 7 percent for German imports, to offset the calculated margins of dumping below cost by exporters in each country. The case now moves into its final stage.
Industry reactions to the latest announcement were predictably mixed. The two petitioners Cleveland-Cliffs company and the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union, which in its petition had asked for tariffs ranging from 47 to 300 percent, stated that Cleveland-Cliffs was abusing trade laws and attempting to artificially inflate prices to increase its profits at the expense of grocery shoppers. The U.S. Can Manufacturers Institute, opposing the petition because they are tin plate importers, praised the exclusion of five countries and hoped the included three countries will be dropped too, after the final stage of the investigation ends later this year.