U.S. decides to impose anti-dumping duties on many steel companies in South Korea

On the 12th, local time, the US Department of Commerce decided in the final judgment of the annual anti-dumping tariffs for oil-specific pipes to impose a 75.81% anti-dumping tariff on South Korean steel company Nexteel and 6.75% anti-dumping tariffs on companies such as Worldsteel.
The U.S. Department of Commerce stated that the South Korean steel company Nexteel did not provide important information and significantly delayed the progress of the investigation. Therefore, it applied the AFA principle, which is the so-called principle of “advantageous disadvantages available”. This “overlord” principle means that the US Department of Commerce can arbitrarily calculate high tariffs if an exporter is judged in the US anti-dumping investigation as not actively providing information and assisting the investigation. The U.S. Department of Commerce finalized the imposition of nearly 76% of anti-dumping duties on Nexteel, which is 29.44 percentage points higher than the initial approval of 46.37% in October last year.
In addition, the U.S. Department of Commerce also imposes anti-dumping tariffs of 6.75% on companies such as Worldsteel. The data shows that in the export volume of Nexteel and Shihja Steel last year, the U.S. market accounted for as high as 90% and 70%. And last year, out of 3.55 million tons of steel products exported to the United States by South Korea, the share of oil-specific steel products used for crude oil extraction and transportation accounted for 56%. According to the analysis of the South Korean steel industry, a number of steel companies in South Korea are subject to anti-dumping duties, which will weaken their price competitiveness in the US market. The export of Korean steel products to the United States will inevitably decline, and will affect the entire Korean steel industry.
Not long ago, the United States granted a permanent exemption from the tariff of 25% of South Korea's steel products, but South Korea also made concessions in areas such as automobiles, and further opened markets to the United States. Some analysts believe that the South Korean steel company was levied a high anti-dumping tariffs, a compromise to the South Korean automobile market and other exchanges for the US steel market, and it added another variable to the trade friction between South Korea and the United States.