Taipei Times
Date: Jan 25, 2020
By: Bloomberg

The EU ordered its customs officials to register flat-rolled stainless steel imports from China, Taiwan and Indonesia, widening the threat of tariffs on the shipments.

The step is part of an inquiry into whether Chinese, Taiwanese and Indonesian producers of hot-rolled, stainless-steel sheets and coils sold them in the EU below cost, a practice known as dumping. The move also covers a parallel EU probe of alleged trade-distorting subsidies to the manufacturers in China and Indonesia.

Registration allows the EU to impose possible tariffs on past transactions. Levies against below-cost imports are known as anti-dumping duties, while import taxes in response to subsidies are called countervailing duties.

The shipments from China, Taiwan and Indonesia will “be made subject to registration for the purpose of ensuring that, should the investigation result in findings leading to the imposition of anti-dumping and/or countervailing duties, those duties can, if the necessary conditions are fulfilled, be levied retroactively on the registered imports,” the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm in Brussels, said on Friday in the Official Journal.    [FULL  STORY]