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Congressman Doyle Calls for Continued Trade Sanctions Against Unfair Foreign Steel Imports
Pittsburgh, PA – October 17, 2006 – U.S. Representative Mike Doyle (PA-14) today called on the U.S. International Trade Commission to continue existing antidumping and countervailing duty orders against corrosion-resistant steel imports from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and Korea.
“Thousands of American jobs are at stake,” Congressman Doyle said. “If these orders are revoked, the long-term future of our steel industry will be at risk – and that would hurt our local and national economies. That’s why I urged the ITC this morning to maintain these antidumping and countervailing duties orders for another 5 years.”
“The US steel industry today isn’t the uncompetitive low-tech industry it was back in the 1970s,” Congressman Doyle added. “It’s an advanced high-tech industry that can compete in terms of price and performance with any producer around the world. But no industry can hope to compete against unfair trade subsidized by a foreign government, and U.S. producers must deal with unfairly-traded imports from some of the largest and most aggressive steel producers in the world.”
“The governments of Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and Korea have a long history of illegally subsidizing their steel industries’ exports to the United States so that they can undersell US steel and put our steel industry out of business,” Congressman Doyle observed. “They’ve also used trade laws to keep US steel out of their own domestic markets. U.S. policy on this issue has been clear. Our market is open to free trade – so long as it is fair trade. Consequently, the ITC put antidumping and countervailing duty orders in place five years ago after concluding that Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and Korea had been dumping corrosion-resistant steel in the United States at below-market prices.”
Corrosion-resistant steel is used in the production of automobiles, as well as other high-end applications like construction and the manufacture of appliances. As worldwide production of lower-quality steel products has surged, steelmakers in the United States have focused more and more on technologically advanced products like corrosion-resistant steel.
The ITC is required by U.S. trade law to review antidumping and countervailing duty orders regularly to determine whether their revocation would harm U.S. industry. If the ITC finds that revocation of an antidumping or countervailing order would do that, it will keep the order in place for another five years. If the ITC concludes that an order is no longer justified, however, it will revoke it.
“I am very concerned that revocation of these antidumping and countervailing duty orders would devastate our domestic steel industry,” Congressman Doyle stated. “I will continue to work to protect this important part of our economy and the jobs it provides.”
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