On November 8, China's Ministry of Commerce (MOC) announced its decision to impose 9.2-14.4 percent antidumping (AD) duty on certain stainless steel seamless pipes imported from the European Union (EU) and Japan. The AD duty will be effective for five years starting from November 9, 2012.
In 2011, China imported 139,400 mt of steel pipes, including 100,000 mt of seamless pipes. Steel pipe imported from the EU and Japan accounted for 80 percent of total steel pipe imports. Meanwhile, stainless seamless pipe constituted 31 percent of the total seamless pipe import volume. Furthermore, in the first nine months of the current year China’s volume of seamless pipe imports from the EU and Japan nearly reached the seamless pipe import total from these sources for the whole of 2011.