Posted on 10 Aug 2022
Mexico's Ministry of Economy has launched an anti-dumping investigation into varieties of cold-rolled steel imported from Vietnam, according to an official gazette published on July 28, probing both export prices and volumes, Mysteel Global has learned. Significantly, steelmakers and exporters in other countries including China could be caught up in the investigation.
The product allegedly dumped is cold-rolled steel with HS codes: 7209.16.01, 7209.17.01, 7209.18.01, 7209.26.01, 7209.27.01, 7209.28.01, 7209.90.99, 7211.23.03, 7211.29.99, 7211.90.99, 7225.50.07, and 7226.92.06.
In a statement confirming Mexico's move, Vietnam's Department of Trade Remedies at the Ministry of Industry and Trade said that Mexico's economy ministry had officially initiated the AD investigation into Vietnam-origin CRC on the basis of a lawsuit filed by the domestic manufacturing industry.
On 18 February this year, Ternium Mexico, S.A. de C.V., a major producer of flat-rolled steel products with a plant in Pesqueria in Mexico's Nuevo Leon state, had petitioned the Mexican government, arguing that CRC products originating in Vietnam were being imported at "discriminatory" prices and in volumes too large for domestic consumption, forcing local producers to operate below capacity and impacting local wages and employment levels, according to trade litigation sources in Vietnam.
The Mexican government has set the investigation period from October 1, 2020 to September 30, 2021, and the injury analysis period from October 1, 2018 to September 30, 2021.
Based on preliminary data from the Geneva-based International Trade Center, in 2020 Mexico imported iron and steel products from Vietnam equivalent to about $220 million, some 70% higher than in 2019.
Vietnamese media reports quote Pham Chau Giang, deputy director general of the trade remedies department, as being unsurprised that Vietnamese steel was being targeted by Mexico. She noted that both Vietnam and Mexico are members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership where exports of certain products enjoy a preferential tax rate of 0%. In August last year, Mexico had also targeted Vietnam-origin galvanized coil in a trade action, Mysteel Global noted.
In the petition lodged by Ternium Mexico in February and now accepted by the government, the claimant names over 80 firms – mostly trading companies, CRC producers and end-users of the products including European, Japanese, South Korean traders and local users.
Among those named are Hoa Sen Group, a maker of galvanized sheet and coil and coated pipes in Ho Chi Minh City, and Nam Kim Steel Joint Stock Company, another Vietnamese maker of coated coils and galvanized pipes in Binh Duong province, northwest of Ho Chi Minh.
The Vietnamese CRC producers and exporters mentioned in the lawsuit will have until September 6, 2022 to submit responses to the survey questionnaire issued by the Mexican investigation authorities. Mexico's economy ministry will make a preliminary conclusion on the case within 130 days from the date of initiation of the investigation.
Though the conflict is principally between steelmakers in Mexico and Vietnam, steelmakers and exporters in other countries might also become involved, Mysteel Global notes.
In its petition, Ternium noted that "a special market situation prevails in the industry of the product under investigation, with artificially low import prices, since there are multiple precedents showing that imports of hot-rolled sheet are made under dumping or subsidy conditions in the Vietnam market, to such an extent that circumvention practices by Vietnamese exporters were determined in the U.S. on the basis of exports of this input originating in China, Taiwan or Korea."
Source:Mysteel Global
