Trade Cases

Steel dominates repeat trade case filings: Report

Written by Laura Miller

December 1, 2023

Steel dominated the industries seeking repeated relief from unfair trade between 1995 and 2020, according to a new report compiled for the International Trade Commission (ITC).

The author of the report, Craig Thomsen, a supervisory international trade analyst at the ITC, termed these “boomerang” petitions or filings. That is when industries seek import injury relief multiple times.

Thomsen’s report showed 48 boomerang industries filed antidumping and/or countervailing petitions (AD/CVD) on more than one occasion in the 25-year period.

During that period, 19 steel-product producing industries sought relief in multiple AD/CVD petitions. Breaking those down further, four were for flat-rolled products, seven were for pipe and tube products, and eight were for other steel products.

Steel trade cases generally had the greatest number of countries named in their boomerang filings, the report said.

The table below shows the boomerang industries and sectors identified in Thomsen’s report, as well as the number of countries named and the years of the filings. Steel cases are highlighted in green.

The full report can be found on the ITC website.

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.