March 7, 2002

‘18’

    The President of the United States has issued his proclamation under the US Trade Act on various categories of steel products exported from India to the US. The action had been initiated against 33 items of steel exports from India In its preliminary recommendations, the US ITC had pronounced a verdict of injury on 12 out of the 33 items under investigation. It accordingly recommended safeguard measures on 16 sub-categories to the President of the USA.

    The Minister for Steel, Shri Braja Kishore Tripathy has appreciated the exclusion of India from the scope of safeguard action by the US President except for the category of exports of Carbon Flanges. Shri Tripathy said that the announcement of safeguard action, however, is disturbing to the extent that it would accentuate instability in the global steel market. The unilateral closure of the US market to a large number of exporters will result in diversion of the surplus into the market of other importing countries. This would further depress the market price of steel items and encourage dumping of steel into other open markets, thereby risking the progressive closure of world markets by resort to unilateral trade defense measures. This would be particularly unfortunate in the context of the round of trade liberalization recently agreed upon by WTO member countries in their meeting at Doha last year.

    The Minister stated that Indian steel exporters are suffering under the heavy burden of anti-dumping and countervailing duties imposed by the US Government on CTL Plates, HR Coils and Wire rods, which have seen our exports of these items plummet to near zero levels in 2001. However, India has taken the issue of imposition of anti-dumping duty on CTL plates to the WTO dispute settlement panel and a decision is expected soon. India’s exclusion from imposition of additional duty on account of safeguard action provides our steel industry with an export opportunity in a wide range of flat and long products, which are not under anti-dumping duty.

    Shri Tripathy said that the Government of India, through the Ministry of Steel, in association with various Associations of Steel exporters, had taken measures to convince the US authorities regarding the lack of justification in imposing safeguard action against Indian exports. A high level delegation headed by Secretary of Steel, Mr. N.N. Khanna had visited the US for a period of five days in January, 2002. The delegation had met a number of high-ranking officials of the US Administration including the US Commerce Secretary and the Deputy USTR. The delegation had forcefully presented its point of view along with the relevant data about Indian exports to the US. The data conveyed had proved that exports from India did not constitute more than 3% of the US market share and cumulatively, the exports from developing countries did not constitute more than 9% of the US market share. Therefore, the stand taken by the delegation was to press for exclusion of India! n exports from the scope of safeguard measures as per article 9.1 of the WTO Agreement on Safeguards.