*EPF308 03/12/2003
USITC Imposes Duties on Imports of Pipe Fittings from China
(Rules that dumping injured U.S. producers) (320)

Washington -- The U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) has voted to impose antidumping duties on imports of non-malleable cast iron pipe fittings from China.

Cast iron pipe fittings are used in plumbing to connect pipes and change their direction.

In a March 12 final ruling the USITC said that imports of these products from China hurt domestic manufacturers.

As a result of the affirmative determination, the Commerce Department will ask the U.S. Customs Service to impose duties equal to dumping margins on the subject imports.

In a February final determination the department said that the pipe fittings from China were dumped on the U.S. market and calculated dumping margins as follows:

-- Jinan Meide Casting Co., Ltd, 7.08 percent.
-- Shanghai Foreign Trade Enterprises Co., 6.34 percent.
-- All others, 75.50 percent.

Imposition of antidumping duties requires final affirmative determinations both from the Department of Commerce that dumping occurred and from the USITC that the imports injured or threatened U.S. industry.

Dumping is the sale of an export good at a price below the home-market or a third-country price, or below the cost of production. The dumping margin is the price difference expressed as a percentage of the export price.

The USITC has also ruled on two duty orders that had been reviewed by the commission and remanded by the U.S. Court of International Trade. The commission upheld March 12 its previous affirmative determinations sustaining the existing countervailing and antidumping duties on cut-to-length steel plate imports from Belgium and Germany.

In another case, the USITC voted March 11 to uphold its 2001 ruling maintaining countervailing duties on imports of grain-oriented silicon electrical steel from Italy and the antidumping duties on imports of this product from Italy and Japan.

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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