The European Commission (EC) has announced that it has ordered the registration of certain corrosion-resistant steel imports from China for the purpose of ensuring that, should investigation result in findings leading to the imposition of antidumping (AD) duties, these duties can, if the necessary conditions are fulfilled, be levied retroactively on the registered imports.
According to the commission’s statement, the registration request was made by the European Steel Association (EUROFER), which requested that imports of the product concerned are made subject to registration so that measures may subsequently be applied against those imports from the date of such registration. In its request, EUROFER claims that registration is justified as the product concerned continues to be dumped and that importers were well aware of dumping practices which stretched over an extended period of time and were causing injury to the EU industry. EUROFER further claims that there was a substantial increase in the level of these imports, even following the investigation period, which would seriously undermine the remedial effect of the antidumping (AD) duty, if such a duty is to be applied.
The antidumping investigation was launched in December 2016 following the application lodged by EUROFER and covers the period from October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2016.
The products in question currently fall within CN codes ex 7210 41 00, ex 7210 49 00, ex 7210 61 00, ex 7210 69 00, ex 7212 30 00, ex 7212 50 61, ex 7212 50 69, ex 7225 92 00, ex 7225 99 00, ex 7226 99 30 and ex 7226 99 70.