On 9th October’20, the US Department of Commerce announced that it would impose preliminary anti-dumping duties "immediately" on imports of aluminium alloy sheets from 18 countries, which includes Germany, Bahrain, Brazil, Spain, India and Italy.
Wilbur Ross, US Secretary of Commerce, said: “In total, that's $ 1.96 billion worth of goods and it's a pretty large percentage of the total aluminium industry in this country.”
"The final decisions will be taken in February 2021, that is to say after the presidential election, indicated the minister of Donald Trump, specifying that it was the American Commission of the International Trade (ITC), an independent organization, which would take the final decision .”
For now, these preliminary duties will be levied "immediately".
He further indicated that the country most affected by these new tariffs would be Germany followed by Bahrain, investigations have shown that these two countries had subsidized their prices the most to export to the United States.
Based on the Commerce Department’s determinations to date, imports from the subject countries will be subject to the following preliminary duty deposit rates (including both preliminary countervailing and antidumping duties):
Bahrain-13.70%, Brazil- 49.48 to 136.95%, Croatia- 3.22%, Egypt-10.42%, Germany -51.18 to 352.71%, Greece-2.72%, India-5.44 to 79.43%, Indonesia- 32.12%, Italy- 0.00 to 29.13%, Korea-5.04%, Oman-3.53%, Romania-12.51 to 83.94%, Serbia-11.24% to 25.84%, Slovenia-4.80%, South Africa- 8.93%, Spain-3.75% to 23.32%, Taiwan -18.02%, Turkey-12.90 to 15.45%.
Wilbur Ross also pointed out that China was not on this list since "a large number of tariffs on their aluminium products" have already been imposed.
"So what is happening is that the excess Chinese capacity has been dumped on other markets," he lamented.
The imposition of punitive tariffs on aluminium in the spring of 2018 marked the start of the trade war with Beijing.
This conflict has resulted in a decrease in the trade deficit with the Asian giant, but the flows have shifted with larger imports from Mexico for example.
The Commerce Department recalls that since the start of Donald Trump's mandate, he has initiated 286 investigations, up 267% compared to the same period of the previous mandate.
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