Assofermet, the Italian association of local steel and scrap distributors, has written to the European Commission (EC) this week regarding the proposed modifications for category 1 products (hot rolled flat steel products) within the scope of the second review of the EU safeguards on steel.
According to Assofermet, the proposed amendments for HRC "would result in a considerable reduction in the volume of imported hot rolled flat products into the EU," which, it said, would have a detrimental impact on end-users, importers, distributors and service centers. The Italian association underlined that the country-specific tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) allocated to certain exporting countries do not reflect the current import flows from those countries, but the considerably lower volumes of imports recorded by such countries in 2015-17. In this period, "Iran, Ukraine, Russia, Brazil and China were among the largest exporting countries" of HRC, while Turkey, South Korea and India exported far smaller volumes compared to today. As a result, "the individual TRQs allocated to countries reaching at least five percent in the reference period of 2015-17 do not reflect the role currently played by those countries," said Assofermet.
Moreover, the association said it believes that the global residual TRQ is likely to remain largely unused as it is very large (around 50 percent of the total) and it reflects the exports of large exporting countries in 2015-17 "which were since then subject to antidumping and anti-subsidy duties". Such duties "continue to be applied on imports of HRC originating in China, Iran, Brazil, Russia and Ukraine," Assofermet underlined. Furthermore, taking into account the new antidumping investigation initiated by the EC against HRC imports from Turkey and that a CVD investigation may follow shortly, "it could be that in the short term more than 80 percent of imports traditionally supplied to the EU market will be subject to antidumping or anti-subsidy measures", Assofermet added.
In conclusion, the Italian association of local steel and scrap distributors requested that the status quo be maintained as regards the HRC quota or, alternatively, that the modifications are based on the import share held by each exporting country in the 2018-19 period.