[author: Joseph A. Laroski Jr.]

In March, the U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce) announced its affirmative preliminary determinations in antidumping (AD) investigations involving certain hot-rolled and cold-rolled steel products. The hot-rolled AD investigations involve imports from Australia, Brazil, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, and the cold-rolled AD investigations involve imports from Brazil, China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United Kingdom. The announcements follow the preliminary determinations issued by Commerce in December 2015 finding dumping of certain corrosion-resistant steel products.

In the hot-rolled AD investigations, Commerce calculated dumping margins of 23.25 percent for the Australian producer, 33.91 to 34.28 percent for Brazilian producers, 6.79 to 11.29 percent for Japanese producers, 3.97 to 7.33 percent for Korean producers, 5.07 percent for the Dutch producer, 5.24 to 7.07 for the Turkish producers, and 49.05 percent for the UK producer. In the cold-rolled AD investigations, Commerce calculated margins of 38.93 for the Brazilian producers, 265.79 percent for the Chinese producers, 6.78 percent for the Indian producers, 71.35 for the Japanese producers, 2.17 to 6.89 percent for the Korean producers, 12.62 to 16.89 percent for the Russian producers, and 5.79 to 31.39 percent for the UK producers.

Commerce has instructed U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to suspend liquidation and require cash deposits for imports covered by these investigations based on these preliminary dumping rates. In addition, Commerce preliminarily found that “critical circumstances” exist with respect to certain exporters of hot-rolled steel from Brazil and Japan and certain exporters of cold-rolled steel from China, Japan, and Russia. Where critical circumstances were found, Commerce instructs CBP to retroactively impose provisional duties on covered products that entered the United States in the 90 days prior to publication of the relevant preliminary determination.

Commerce is scheduled to announce its final determinations in the cold-rolled investigations in May-July 2016. The final Commerce determinations in the hot-rolled investigations are expected in August 2016.

If Commerce’s final determinations are affirmative, and the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) makes affirmative final determinations that imports of hot-rolled and cold-rolled steel materially injure, or threaten material injury to, the domestic steel industry, Commerce will issue AD orders. The ITC is scheduled to make its final injury determinations for cold-rolled steel this summer and for hot-rolled steel in the late summer or early fall.

More than $3.2 billion in imports of the products subject to these investigations entered the United States in 2014.