The US Department of Commerce said on Friday that it has set preliminary antidumping duties on Taiwanese non-oriented electrical steel (NOES) manufacturers after it concluded that imports of their products have caused material damage to the US steel market.

Leicong Industrial Co., a Chungli-based steelmaker, has been ordered to pay an antidumping tariff of 52.23 percent, the highest among the Taiwanese firms in the case, according to the department.

The department said that since Leicong had failed to answer its questionnaire, it handed down the punitive duty based on the facts available.

Meanwhile, China Steel Corp, Taiwan’s largest steelmaker, has, along with other Taiwanese defendants, been ordered to pay 28.14 percent antidumping tariff, the department said.

NOES is cold-rolled, flat-rolled alloy steel used in the machine tool industry and in the production of electricity generators.

NOES firms in China, South Korea, Japan, Germany and Sweden have also had US antidumping duties imposed on them.

As no Chinese respondents in the case replied to the department’s requests for information, all Chinese NOES exporters involved in the case have been ordered to pay an antidumping tariff of 407.52 percent.

NOES firms in South Korea have been hit with a 6.91 percent antidumping tariff, while Japanese firms have been assigned punitive duties ranging between 135.59 percent and 204.79 percent.

Exporters from Germany must pay antidumping tariffs of 86.29 percent to 98.84 percent, while companies from Sweden have to pay punitive tariffs of 98.46 percent to 126.72 percent.

The department said it is scheduled to issue a final decision about exporters from Taiwan and South Korea on Oct. 3, while a final ruling on exporters from China, Japan, Germany and Sweden is scheduled to be issued on July 29.

The department launched antidumping as well as antisubsidy investigations in November last year after AK Steel Corp, a steel supplier based in Ohio, filed a complaint.

Following an investigation, the department imposed an antisubsidy duty of 12.82 percent on Leicong in March, while other Taiwanese firms faced a 6.41 percent countervailing duty. China Steel did not have to face any antisubsidy duties.

The case is the first time in 27 years that Taiwan’s steelmakers have been the subject of an investigation by the US government into alleged government subsidies.

Taiwan’s NOES exports to the US fell to US$8.14 million last year from US$17.25 million recorded in 2012, the department’s statistics found.

Source: Taipei Times