4/1/2015 1:39:00 PM
HEADLINES
Europe Renews 5-Year Tariffs on Chinese Fasteners
The European Union renewed tariffs as high as 74.1% for five years on screws and bolts from China.
“There is a likelihood that, if measures were to lapse, dumping would recur,” the European Commission explained in its journal.
Alexander Kolodzik, the new secretary general of the European Fastener Distributors Association and a lawyer, told FIN that Chinese manufacturers sought a review of the tariff and wanted a “more realistic” tariff from the 28-nation European Union’s trade authority in Brussels.
China had taken the challenge to the World Trade Organization.
In 2009 the EU reimposed the duties as high as 74.1% on steel fastener imports from China.
The levies target Chinese exporters such as Gem-Year Industrial Co. for allegedly having sold the fasteners in Europe below cost, a practice known as dumping, Bloomberg reported.
Originally the EU sought to protect European fastener manufacturers such as Italy’s Fontana Luigi SpA. The Chinese government responded by filing its first complaint against the EU at the WTO. At the end of 2010, the WTO ruled against some of the European measures and but allowed the EU certain limits and the EU responded in 2012 reducing levies to a maximum 74.1% from 85%. The revised duties range from 22.9% to 74.1%, depending on the Chinese company.
In 2011, during China’s challenge at the WTO, the EU found that Chinese exporters shipped fasteners to Europe via Malaysia to evade the tariffs. That led to extending the levy to Malaysia, which now also is covered by the renewal.
Kolodzik, who also heads legal affairs and competition policy for the Federation of German Wholesale, Foreign Trade & Services, noted Chinese exports of fasteners to the EU dwindled since the tariffs. Bloomberg reported the Chinese share of the EU market dropped to 0.6 percent since 2010 compared with 26% in 2007.
Stainless steel screws and bolts from China are covered in separate anti-dumping duties.
In January, the EFDA, representing 140 EU fastener importers and distributors submitted a statement that the “EFDA does not object in principle to fair and appropriate trade defense measures on fasteners orienting from the People’s Republic of China,” but that the duty levels of the past five years “were not appropriate to achieve this objective.”
Dr. Volker Lederer, as president of the EFDA, wrote to the EU that “high anti-dumping duties have distorted the fastener market radically and unnecessarily and have catalyzed circumvention to the detriment of the European manufacturers and the honest and conscientious European importers and distributors.”
Lederer predicted that renewal would result in “significant errors inherent in the original decision will be perpetuated.”
The first five years did not create a fair market but “it has almost entirely stopped imports from China.”
European distributors cannot easily buy many of the fasteners they need from within the EU or third countries, Lederer wrote.
“In fact, further narrowing of this supply base would constitute a significant risk to many important European industry sectors.” ©2015 GlobalFastenerNews.com
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