NBC News
May 18, 2016
China’s ‘Zombie’ Steelmakers Hit With Huge U.S. Tariffs
BEIJING — The U.S. government has imposed massive tariffs on Chinese steelmakers in a bid to halt what American rivals have labeled as large-scale dumping by their Asian competitors.
The Commerce Department ruling levies import taxes of up to a whopping 522 percent — a 266 percent anti-dumping duty and a 256 percent anti-subsidy duty — on imports of Chinese cold-rolled flat steel.
Cold-rolled flat steel is typically used in car manufacturing and sheet metal for construction.
“The size of the tariff is really a surprise for China and a little abnormal,” said Xiang Songzuo, chief Economist at the Agricultural Bank of China. “This new U.S. tariff could create back-and-forth retaliatory taxes which will not be good for China-U.S. economic relations and the global economy.”
Plumes of smoke and steam rise from a steel plant in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province on Aug. 10, 2015. Chinatopix via AP / AP