6 December 2022 – Are climate tariffs on Chinese steel products coming? Several media report that the United States and the European Union are working on new market protection instruments against China. USITC extends anti-dumping measure against stainless steel pipes from Taiwan and South Korea. And stainless prices currently show solid upward trend for December 2022 and January 2023.
CO2 tariffs on Chinese steel planned?
The United States and the European Union are planning climate-based tariffs on Chinese steel products, according to recent media reports. The basis for this is an agreement from 2021. There has been no official statement on this so far. Presumably because the legal framework for such a measure has not yet been finalised.
Successor for Section 232 duties sought?
There is already speculation that these new climate tariffs could create successors to the Section 232 and EU Safeguard measures. The primary objective of both market protection measures is to protect the respective industries from Chinese producers. Thus, possible new climate tariffs would again primarily focus on China.
Europe lags behind in blast furnaces
As long as the basis of such a decision would be technically legitimate, if one compares the state of the art of some current Chinese blast furnaces with those of outdated European manufacturers, the question arises as to who has the potential to produce its steel more cleanly in the future with less effort.
Stainless steel: USITC extends anti-dumping measures against Taiwan and South Korea
The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) has determined in the anti-dumping Sunset Review against imports of certain welded stainless steel pipe from South Korea and Taiwan that there is a strong likelihood of recurrence of dumping should the measure be repealed. As a result, USITC has extended the anti-dumping measure against imports from South Korea and Taiwan for five years.
No softening of measures in sight
This is a further indication by the US government that there will be no softening of measures against steel imports, but rather a tightening of them. Why the United States is now probably also looking for a way to forge the Section 232 duties into a new, legally sound and binding garb – together with the European Union, which will also need a successor to the EU Safeguard measure from 2024.
Stainless prices further strengthened
Yesterday’s market data further underpinned stainless prices. And rising prices were also reported again from China for nickel, ferro-molybdenum, stainless steel futures and from the spot market.
For the European market, the trend in alloy surcharges for January 2023 is also currently pointing strongly upwards. To our delight, our analyses in this regard have now also been taken up and confirmed by other industry media.
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Disclaimer: Many things here represent our opinion. Others are information from the Internet. We can therefore never claim to be correct or complete. And never base a business decision solely on the news you receive from us.
