By Jiang Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-11-20 10:03

Certain Chinese-made steel oil and gas well casings will face double punitive duties in the Canadian market, the Canadian government has announced.

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The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) recently made preliminary estimates to levy dumping and subsidy tariffs on certain seamless carbon or alloy steel oil and gas well casings made in China. It said Chinese products are subsidized by the government and sold at unfairly low prices in the Canadian market.

The agency decided punitive tariffs from 15 percent to 78 percent would be collected on certain imports from China.

CBSA began the anti-dumping and countervailing investigations after Calgary, Canada-based Tenaris Algoma Tubes Inc, filed a complaint. The company claimed certain imports from China "are harming Canadian production by causing lost sales, price erosion, price suppression, lost revenues, reduced profitability, lost employment, underutilization of capacity and impairment to make future investments".

China exported some 68,700 tons of certain products, valued at about $100 million last year, according to Canadian statistics. Final rulings are expected to be made next year.

Canada was the first country to launch countervailing investigation into products made in China. It has, so far, initiated five anti-dumping and countervailing investigations on Chinese goods since 2004.

"Such frequent countervailing investigations of Chinese products by the Canadian government is conveying the wrong message to its industry and other World Trade Organization (WTO) members," the Chinese Commerce Ministry said when the case was opened.

In addition to the Canadian market, a number of Chinese products, such as glossy paper and steel piping, have also been subject to US anti-dumping and countervailing investigations or tariffs.

China in September filed a complaint against the US dual investigation against Chinese glossy paper with the WTO.