The US Department of Commerce (USDOC) has recently announced an affirmative preliminary anti-dumping (AD) determination on truck and bus tyres imported from China as prompted by a petition on January 29 from The United Steelworkers (USW), a union that represents 850,000 workers of various industries in North America.
The chair of the union’s national rubber tire bargaining conference, USW International Secretary-Treasurer Stan Johnson, emphasized: “We have fought back against China’s predatory trade practises in nearly every part of the tyre industry, including tyres for passenger cars, light trucks, off-road vehicles, and now truck and bus tyres.
“Again and again China has been shown to benefit from massive subsidies and to engage in widespread dumping in order to gain market share at the expense of American jobs.”
He also said that Chinese truck tyre imports have increased from 6.3 million in 2012 to 8.9 million in 2015 with an increased share of consumption of more than 36% by 2014.
Following the USDOC’s preliminary determination, importers will need to start posting cash deposits or bonds to offset dumping by Chinese tyre producers at margins ranging from 20.87% to 22.57%. Preliminary countervailing duty margins were announced June 28 with margins of 17.06 to 23.38%.
The combined AD and CVD marginson the truck and bus tyre imports from China are nearly 40%. The final USDOC rulings are expected in January of 2017 with a final US International Trade Commission (USITC) determination next March.
Leo W. Gerard, USW International President, said: “The government investigators and our trade counsel have been diligent in handling this massive trade case involving more than US$1 billion value of truck and bus tyre imports from China in 2015, increasing market share each of the last three years at the expense of American producers and USW tyre production workers.”
He added, “Unfair truck tyre imports from China have denied our domestic industry the opportunity to share in job increases during a period of robust demand growth.”
The USW represents 6,000 workers at five facilities in the US that account for more than two-thirds of domestic capacity to produce truck and bus tyres. The tyre production facilities are operated by Bridgestone-Firestone, Goodyear and Sumitomo, and they are located in LaVergne and Warren County, Tennessee; Buffalo, New York; Danville, Virginia; and Topeka, Kansas.