Malaysia has imposed preliminary anti-dumping duties on cold-rolled coils from China, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam ranging from nil to 26.39% effective August 27, the country's Ministry of International Trade and Industry said late Tuesday.
Also, Malaysia has slapped a provisional measure "in the form of provisional anti-dumping duties guaranteed by a security equivalent to the amount of the dumping margins determined in the preliminary determination," the ministry said.
The move resulted from a petition made by Mycron Steel CRC, which claimed the CRC imported from the mentioned countries were imported into Malaysia at a price lower than its domestic selling price.
Mycron had said overall imports of CRC and CRC-related products reached 1.71 million mt in 2017, adding "the bulk of which could have been manufactured locally."
The duties and measures will be applied to CRC of iron or non-alloy steel with a width of more than 1,300 mm, but excludes "tin mill black plate and subject merchandise imported for the purpose of automotive and fin wall transformer end usage," it said. Fin walls increase the surface area of a transformer in contact with cooling air.
"This is to protect their domestic market from Chinese CRC...[because] Chinese mills export to Malaysia mostly CRC with a width of more than 1,300 mm, to avoid existing tariff on CRC less than 1,300 mm wide," a source with a South Korean mill said, adding that South Korean mills, however, do not export much CRC to Malaysia, but mostly automotive steel.
As the duties are preliminary, they will stay in effect for 120 days from August 27 until a final determination is made before December 24, 2019.
Earlier this year, Malaysia imposed anti-dumping duties on imports of cold-rolled coils of alloy and non-alloy steel from China, South Korea and Vietnam for two years starting May 2019.
