Door is now open to broaden crackdown on steel dumping
The U.S. Department of Commerce ruling that anti-dumping and countervailing duties on Chinese steel-pipe products are justified should serve as a warning to countries that have long indulged in illegal trade practices to the economic detriment of American manufacturers.
But if America’s so-called trading partners are true to form, they will cry foul and then go back to what they’ve been doing for years.
That’s why the Commerce Department — read that the Obama administration — should aggressively go after other foreign companies that are dumping steel pipe on the American market. China may be the biggest offender — the government and the companies are one and the same when it comes to selling products in the U.S. at artificially low prices — but there are other countries that are just as guilty.
Indeed, a petition has been filed with the Commerce Department asking regulators to determine whether South Korea, India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and Ukraine are engaging in unfair and illegal trade practices.
Nine U.S. companies, including ones with operations in Youngstown and Northeast Ohio, filed the petition. Among them are Vallourec Star (formerly V&M Star of Youngstown), U.S. Steel, TML IPSCO and JMC Steel Group, which operates Wheatland Tube Co. in Warren and Sharon, Pa.
The companies contend that steel-pipe producers in the nine countries are selling products in the U.S. at less than their fair market value, thus placing them at a definite advantage over domestic producers.
In 2012, more than 1.7 million tons of steel pipe for the oil and gas industry were imported, up from 840,000 tons in 2010. Metal Bulletin, an international publisher that provides analysis and news about the global metals market, has estimated that the oil and gas industry was worth $33 billion at the end of 2012 and that it would grow at an annual rate of 4.5 percent between 2013 and 2020.
Chinese companies have taken direct aim at the oil and gas boom, especially with the shale play in North Dakota, Pennsylvania and the eastern part of Ohio.
Production doubled
According to Well Servicing Magazine, U.S. Steel, the nation’s largest steel producer, has seen production for tubular goods used for pipes, tubes and joints in gas drilling double in the last couple of years; total tubular-good shipments reached 7.3 million tons in 2011, up from 3.9 million in 2009; a total of 1,974 drill rigs were operating in the U.S. as of August 2011, up by 19 percent from the previous year. About 45 percent of the rigs were working in the nation’s shale deposits.
Ohio’s two U.S. senators, Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Rob Portman, have been at the forefront of the battle in Congress to end the illegal dumping of foreign-made products and to ensure that there’s a level playing field.
It is incontrovertible that when American manufacturers compete with foreign companies on an equal footing, Made in the U.S.A. becomes the label of choice.
Brown and Portman are committed to closing whatever loopholes exist in the law that allow foreign companies to dump their products.
“This decision makes it clear that countries like China can’t use loopholes to circumvent international law and evade anti-dumping and countervailing duties,” Brown said after the Commerce Department’s ruling on China. “Our steelmakers can compete with anyone in the world, and now we’ve taken a step towards leveling the playing field and protecting domestic jobs.”
“This is good news to the thousands of American workers who were threatened from the risk of watered-down protections, which would have allowed cheap Chinese products to flood our domestic markets,” Portman said.