US announces duties on steel cylinders

The US Commerce Department announced planned duties on high-pressure steel cylinders from China on Tuesday in response to what it said were unfair pricing practices and government subsidies.

The anti-dumping duties ranged from 6.62 percent to 31.21 percent, and an additional countervailing duty was 15.81 percent, according to the department.

The decision is not due to be confirmed until mid-June when the International Trade Commission, a quasi-judicial federal agency, makes a final adjudication, according to US legal procedure.

The decision is a victory for Norris Cylinder Company, a Texas manufacturer that filed a petition last year asking for protection against lower-priced imports from China. Norris is a subsidiary of TriMas Corp.

The petition was a competition tactic by Norris because its products are less competitive than those of Chinese manufacturers, a legal manager from Beijing Tianhai Industry Co Ltd told China Daily.

Beijing Tianhai Industry Co Ltd, a high-pressure steel cylinder manufacturer, has been the mandatory respondent of the US Commerce Department's investigation. The result of the investigation said it received a preliminary net subsidy rate of 22.34 percent.

Tianhai said because of the investigation, its US importers now had to pay cash deposits for the imported cylinders, increasing the actual cost.

Tianhai employed a legal team to tackle the case and will appeal if the final determination is deemed unfair to it, its legal manager said.

US imports of high-pressure steel cylinders and similar products rose to $81.7 million in 2011 from $29.1 million two years earlier, statistics from US Commerce Department showed.