USW comments on India OTR tyre determination

The United Steelworkers (USW) union has expressed its disappointment in the US Department of Commerce’s preliminary determination regarding the introduction of anti-dumping duties for OTR tyres imported from India. USW international president Leo W. Gerard notes that the Department of Commerce announced a negative preliminary determination for anti-dumping duties in response to the petition filed by the USW and Titan International earlier this year.

“The USW was disappointed in the preliminary results announced Friday (12 August) by the USDOC. Petitioners have raised a number of important issues in advance of the preliminary comments,” Gerard said. “Until disclosure materials are provided to USW trade counsel, we won’t know if those issues were addressed in the preliminary or not.”

The USW president explained that typically there are important factual and legal issues at this stage of the case. “Our members have suffered harm from OTR imports. The USW will be looking to the Commerce Department to address all issues raised by petitioners in their final to ensure that any dumping is in fact addressed and offset.”

The USW and Titan filed petitions on 8 January 2016 against OTR tyre imports from China, India and Sri Lanka. In February, the US International Trade Commission found a reasonable indication the domestic industry is being injured by dumped and subsidised imports from India and Sri Lanka, but found imports of mounted tyres from China to be negligible in volume. According to the US government’s import statistics for 2014, new pneumatic off-the-road tyres from India were valued at an estimated US$167.3 million.