China Hit by Five-Year European Tariffs on Steel Road Wheels

(Bloomberg) --

The European Union imposed five-year tariffs on steel road wheels from China in a dispute that will ease concerns by manufacturers in Europe about whether revamped EU trade-protection rules are strong enough.

The duties as high as 66.4% punish Chinese exporters of steel wheels for vehicles including cars, tractors and trailers for allegedly having sold them in the EU below cost, a practice known as dumping.

The European market for such products is worth an estimated 800 million euros ($894 million). The Chinese companies targeted include Zhejiang Jingu Co. and Xingmin Intelligent Transportation Systems Co.

Dumped imports from China caused “injury” to EU-based producers of the goods, the European Commission, the 27-nation bloc's executive arm in Brussels, said on Wednesday in the Official Journal. The five-year duties match provisional levies introduced in October and will take effect on Thursday.

The trade dispute has been a test case for whether a new EU system to protect European manufacturers from dumped imports from around the world would make it harder to counter such shipments. The revamped rules were partly an attempt to meet longstanding Chinese demands for more favorable treatment.

The case involving Chinese steel road wheels was based on a dumping complaint early last year by the Association of European Wheel Manufacturers.

The EU has 11 producers of steel road wheels, the commission said when introducing the provisional levies in October. It took the unusual step of declining to identify any of the European producers, saying they requested anonymity “on grounds of a fear of retaliatory measures by some of their customers.”

The EU industry employs 3,600 people mainly in Germany, France, Spain, the Czech Republic, Italy, Romania and Poland, according to the commission.

Chinese exporters' combined share of the EU market for steel road wheels doubled to 5.3% in 2018 compared with 2015, the commission said in October.

The rates of the anti-dumping duties are 50.3% against 19 specifically named Chinese exporters -- including Zhejiang Jingu and Xingmin Intelligent Transportation Systems -- and 66.4% against all others.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Stearns in Brussels at jstearns2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Richard Bravo, Zoe Schneeweiss

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