Bethlehem Steel Corporation
For Immediate Release
BETHLEHEM, Pa., April 25, 2001 - Bethlehem Steel Corporation welcomed preliminary antidumping determinations announced today by the U.S. Commerce Department, finding that producers in all eleven of the countries named in pending hot-rolled steel investigations were dumping in the U.S. market at substantial margins.
The exporting countries include Argentina, China, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Romania, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand and Ukraine. The margins announced range as high as 239.57% ad valorem — dumping of a magnitude more than sufficient to affect purchasing decisions for a commodity product like hot-rolled steel.
"We commend the Bush Administration for confirming the continued dumping of steel products in this country," said Duane R. Dunham, Bethlehem Steel's chairman, president and chief executive officer. "The preliminary anti-dumping determinations announced today by the U.S. Commerce Department on hot-rolled steel show once again the intentional disregard foreign competitors have for United States' trade laws. If a comprehensive, long-term solution is not developed very soon, this continued abuse of our laws will have significant and dire consequences for our employees and retirees, communities, companies and stockholders."
The Commerce Department had already issued preliminary anti-subsidy determinations involving five of these countries — Argentina, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Thailand — finding that their hot-rolled steel exports benefit from countervailable subsidies as high as 40% ad valorem.
A surge in dumped and subsidized imports during 2000 prompted these trade complaints. Hot-rolled steel imports from the 11 subject countries reached roughly 3.4 million tons in January to August 2000 — an increase of more than 111% from the same period in 1999 and more than 400% from the same period in 1998 — and captured more than 16% of the U.S. market. This import surge cut short a budding recovery from the 1998 steel import crisis, as domestic producers were once again forced to lower their prices to meet dumped and heavily subsidized competition.
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