EUROFER Asks for Anti Subsidy Probe on Chinese Steel Following Dumping Plaint

The European steel association, also known as EUROFER, filed an anti-subsidy complaint with the European Commission - the EU’s executive branch - in January.

China’s commerce ministry, in a statement posted on its website, claimed that the anti-subsidy and anti-dumping investigations would “send a wrong signal of trade protectionism to the world,” and would “undermine the joint efforts in response to the crisis in Central Europe.”

The organisation had also filed an anti-dumping complaint at the European Commission in November of last year, alleging that China was selling these products in the EU at below-market prices; the Commission initiated that investigation the following month.

The WTO’s highest court had found that a country could not simultaneously impose both countervailing duties - duties imposed to remedy the use of subsidies by the violating country - and anti-dumping duties - duties that punish the practice of selling goods in foreign markets below cost, also known as “dumping” - without having assessed whether the extra duties amount to “double remedies.”

In its statement, the commerce ministry argued that running anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations against the same products from China are a violation of WTO rules. The problem referred to by China is known as “double counting’, which had been dismissed by the WTO’s Appellate Body in March 2011.

China is the EU’s second largest trading partner, with two-way goods trade totalling €428 billion in 2011, according to European Commission estimates. The EU is also China’s biggest trading partner.