Bethlehem Steel Corporation
For Immediate Release
BETHLEHEM, Pa., April 16, 2001 - Bethlehem Steel Corporation welcomed preliminary determinations announced by the U.S. Commerce Department today finding that hot-rolled carbon steel products imported from India, Indonesia, South Africa and Thailand benefited from countervailable subsidies.
"The subsidy measures described in today's countervailing duty notices are typical of the unfair practices our industry faces in virtually every part of the world and every product sector," said Duane R. Dunham, Bethlehem Steel's chairman, president and chief executive officer. "We see this in both developed and, in today's announcements, developing countries. That is why maintaining our trade laws is so important. As price-competitive as the domestic industry has become, and with all the restructuring we have gone through, we cannot compete against the deep pockets of foreign governments that subsidize our competitors."
The Commerce Department calculated subsidy margins as high as 34% ad valorem, a very substantial subsidy for a commodity product like hot-rolled steel. The Department had already announced high preliminary subsidy margins on hot-rolled steel products from Argentina, and later this month will announce preliminary antidumping findings for all five countries subject to countervailing duty investigations, as well as China, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Romania, Taiwan and Ukraine.
These cases were filed after dumped and subsidized imports surged in 2000 -- reaching levels comparable to those of the 1998 steel crisis, driving down prices and profits, and displacing sales of U.S. producers. Unfairly traded hot-rolled carbon steel imports from the eleven respondent countries totaled 3,367,669 tons in January to August 2000, an increase of over 111% from the same period in 1999 and over 400% from the same period in 1998. Imports of hot-rolled carbon steel products from these eleven countries captured over 16% of the domestic market in 2000 (January - August). This compares to an average import market share of 9.6% in the same period in 1999 and 4.2% in the same period for 1998.
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