Trade Cases

Commerce Adjusts AD Duties on Japanese Hot Rolled

Written by Laura Miller

May 25, 2022

The US Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration has adjusted the antidumping duty margins on imports of hot-rolled steel flats from Japan after an administrative review covering the one-year period ended September 30, 2020.

Japan

Commerce calculated a weighted-average dumping margin of 24.07% for mandatory respondents Nippon Steel Corp., Nippon Steel Nisshin Co., and Nippon Steel Trading, according to a Federal Register filing. The margin is notably higher than the 11.7% margin applied to the companies’ shipments in the prior one-year period.

The 24.07% margin determined for Nippon Steel was also assigned to a handful of other companies that were not individually examined. Those companies include: Hanwa Co., Higuchi Manufacturing America, Hitachi Metals, JFE Steel Corp./JFE Shoji Trade Corp., JFE Shoji Trade America, Kanematsu Corp., Kobe Steel, Metal One Corp., Miyama Industry Co., Nakagawa Special Steel Inc., Nippon Steel & Sumikin Logistics Co.,  Okaya & Co., Panasonic Corp., Saint-Gobain K.K, Shinsho Corp., Sumitomo Corp., Suzukaku Co., Tokyo Steel Manufacturing Co., and Toyota Tsusho Corp. Nagoya. The dumping rate for these companies had previously been set at 10.95% in the prior administrative review.

Honda Trading Canada Inc. and Mitsui & Co. were found not to have shipped any of the subject material during the period of review. Any imports produced by these companies but exported by other parties without their own rate will be subject to the all-others duty rate which remains at 5.58%.

The material subject to these duties includes hot-rolled coils with a width of 12.7mm or greater, regardless of thickness, and uncoiled hot-rolled material of a thickness less than 4.75mm and a width that is 12.7mm or greater and that measures at least 10 times the thickness.

In 2021, the US imported 238,535 metric tons of hot-rolled sheet from Japan. In the first three months of this year, 84,982 metric tons were imported from the East Asian nation, according to Commerce Department figures. Annualized, this would be 42% year-on-year rise.

Hot-rolled imports from Japan, Australia, Brazil, Korea, the Netherlands, Turkey, and the UK have been subject to antidumping duties since the original trade case was brought in 2016. The duties are currently being reviewed in a five-year sunset review case which is scheduled to conclude in November of this year. The US International Trade Commission will determine whether the duties should be continued for another five years or be allowed to ‘sunset,’ or expire completely.

By Laura Miller, Laura@SteelMarketUpdate.com

 

Laura Miller

Laura Miller is a reporter and editor for Steel Market Update. She has held a variety of positions within the steel industry since 2007, including reporting and editing for Steel Business Briefing/Platts, the Association for Iron and Steel Technology, and Kallanish Commodities, as well as marketing for what was then known as ThyssenKrupp Steel USA (now AM/NS Calvert). After a five-year hiatus working across other industries, she returned to steel in 2021 and has covered the flat rolled, tubular, and trade areas of the industry. She is a member of the Association of Women in the Metal Industries and a past-president of the AWMI Pittsburgh Chapter. She holds a BA in Latin American Studies from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. She can be reached at laura@steelmarketupdate.com or 724-759-7869.

Read more from Laura Miller

Latest in Trade Cases

Price: How did ‘Buy Clean’ get switched to ‘Buy Dirty’?

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) appropriated more than $4 billion to the General Services Administration (GSA) and Federal Highways Administration (FHWA) for “Buy Clean” programs. The statute makes clear that GSA and FHWA purchases under these programs are limited to those with “substantially lower” emissions. There is no ambiguity in that requirement. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has defined “substantially lower” to mean products with the lowest 20% of embodied emissions when compared to similar materials.

Op-Ed: Strong trade enforcement builds prosperity and security

Tariffs on unfairly traded steel and other products help to stabilize America’s most important industries, safeguard tens of thousands of jobs, and protect national security. My union, the United Steelworkers (USW), never seeks these remedies lightly. And presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, implement them only after diligent investigations documenting the harm that foreign adversaries intentionally inflict upon our country with dumping, overproduction and other kinds of trade cheating. I don’t think Lewis Leibowitz considered these points while criticizing tariffs in his excessively pro-free-trade column, “Where is the voice of the consumer?” on May 5.

Leibowitz on trade: Where is the voice of the consumer?

The election campaign is white-hot right now, and the Biden administration is touting its protectionist message. Just this past week, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) touted this message. In a release entitled “What They are Saying,” USTR quoted many of the usual protectionist groups praising government action against Chinese steel exports and shipbuilding. Consuming industries in the United States, which employ many times the American workers as the industries seeking trade protection, were not mentioned.