A leading US business group is seeking the elimination of duties on tin mill products from China and three other countries, warning that the extra costs would raise consumer prices and might also lead to domestic job losses.
Tin mill steel is used to make containers for canned goods like beans, soups and sodas, as well as products like hairsprays.
“The concern from a can-maker’s perspective is that if you make a finished can, for example, in Mexico – perhaps using Japanese steel, or Chinese steel or somebody else’s steel – and then import the finished empty can to the US, it’s not subject to the same tariffs,” Tom Madrecki, a vice-president at the Consumer Brands Association, contended.
“It imperils US manufacturing jobs in the end,” he added.
Producers from South Korea, Canada and Germany were also assessed levies, but at much lower rates: 2.69 per cent, 5.27 per cent and 6.88 per cent, respectively.
The US International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency, will have the final word on the duties, by deciding whether American steel manufacturers suffered material loss because of the dumping of tin mill products. The vote is scheduled for February 6.
If the anti-dumping and anti-subsidy penalties are permitted, they will be in addition to the 25 per cent tariffs already in place for steel imports, initially imposed by then-president Donald Trump in 2018. US President Joe Biden has maintained most of these tariffs to boost US steel manufacturing.
US extends tariff exclusions on some Chinese goods till May
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Lael Brainard, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, claimed on Monday that research indicated a “wave of cheap, subsidised imports from China wiped out nearly one million manufacturing jobs” in industrial communities in the US.
Brainard, who called steel as an important part of national security considerations, hailed Washington’s efforts to diversify critical supply chains away from China.
On January 4, Cleveland-Cliffs, an American flat-rolled steel producer that, along with the United Steelworkers, had sought the tin mill duties along with the United Steelworkers, welcomed the Commerce Department’s announcement.
The firm’s chief executive, Lourenco Goncalves, said that the department’s investigation and decision were “evidence that domestic companies and workers in the domestic tin mill industry have been subject to unfair, illegal trade practices”.
US tariffs on Chinese imports might increase in 2024, analysts say
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Madrecki, though, argued that US companies import tin mill products from foreign manufacturers not because of artificially lower prices. Rather, he said, it was because US tin steelmakers did not meet “quality” and other requirements.
“Cleveland-Cliffs has not been able to make – and has refused to make – the type of steel that’s required by can makers to meet the consumer packaged goods companies’ specifications,” he contended.
Madrecki said the US domestic steel industry only has capacity to supply “at most” 50 per cent of the total demand, citing a survey his association had conducted suggesting that the average US consumer uses packaged goods 42 times a day.