Engineering news
Trade body UK Steel are urging the business secretary, Sajid Javid, to spearhead immediate European action on anti-dumping measures at the EU Competitiveness Council, or risk the damage caused to the sector in the UK spreading across the continent.
While welcoming Javid's leadership and success in calling the meeting, UK Steel said the Secretary of State must now press for immediate action to speed up efforts to prevent unfair dumping.
The call comes as latest data forecasts that Chinese dumping of Rebar onto the UK market is set to account for more than half the UK market of 720,000 tonnes in 2015.
In particular, UK Steel is calling for the EU to follow the example of the United States where action on dumping takes weeks. In contrast, in the EU cases can take many months to be accepted and initiated, and then a further nine months before even a provisional decision is taken. A speeding up of the process is not only in the interests of the steel industry, but for other stakeholders to help remove months of uncertainty.
UK Steel said that the recent decision by the EU to extend import tariffs on wire rod at 24% for a further five years shows that “action on unfair trade can work” as there has been a significant reduction in Chinese imports of wire rod into the EU.
Gareth Stace, director of UK Steel, said: “The US and other countries have already moved to prevent cheap Chinese imports distorting their markets and now the EU must do the same and, do so quickly. The UK must seize the moment and encourage a rapid response in Brussels if we’re to prevent large scale problems for steel makers spreading in Britain and across the continent.”
The call to tackle unfair trade is one of the five key asks by UK Steel to address the current crisis, which also includes a call to government to fully implement an energy intensive industry compensation package and support for local content in major construction projects, such as HS2.
Meanwhile, Workers Uniting, a global trade union representing more than two million workers in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States, has issued a call to European Union and North America to oppose the granting of Market Economy Status to China.
Workers Uniting said: “We ask all concerned organisations to communicate this opposition urgently to their respective governments and, in Europe, to the Commissioner for International Trade of the European Commission, Cecilia Malmström.”
Under the terms of China’s Protocol of Accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), other WTO members have the right to treat the People's Repubulic of China (PRC) as a non-market economy for purposes of anti-dumping and countervailing duty laws. Workers Uniting has said that one clause regarding the treatment of China expires on December 11, 2016, but the remaining language continues to operate. This, they claim, has led to a campaign by China to end its treatment as a non-market economy by those countries which continue to treat it as such so as to gain preferential treatment.
Workers Uniting said: “How China is treated under North American and EU anti-dumping laws is critical to the economies and well-being of workers in both regions. While no decision has been taken, there have been media reports of an internal EU memo that argues for granting market economy treatment.
“If such a decision were taken it would remove the ability of the European Union to use instruments to protect its industries and workers from the effects of unfair competition, this could have devastating effects for workers and their communities and is wholly unacceptable.”
IndustriALL European Trade Union, representing industrial workers across Europe, said: “Granting MES to China when it does not meet the technical criteria to be considered a market economy would be devastating for a number of manufacturing sectors in the EU as the possibility to impose anti-dumping measures on cheap Chinese imports will largely disappear.
“The right to use non-MES methodologies for calculating price differences must therefore be kept in place as the only way to reveal the true level of dumping. The emphasis should be on creating a level playing field between the EU and China where workers do not fall victim to unfair trade practices."