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U.S. steel associations rebut Chinese trade claims: officials from AISI, SMA and SSINA offer a "significantly different view" in response to a white paper on trade from China's Chamber of Commerce.

Article Excerpt
CHINA'S CHAMBER OF COMMERCE of Metals, Minerals & Chemicals Importers and Exporters (CCCMC) released a white paper in May "to provide accurate information about the Chinese steel industry ... [and to] ... clarify the intentions of the Chinese mills and thereby reduce concerns in the U.S. about the expansion of China's steel capacity." If anything, the paper has served to reinforce the U.S. steel industry's view that China is unlikely to reform its unfair trade practices anytime soon.

The American Iron and Steel Institute, the Steel Manufacturers Association and the Specialty Steel Industry of North America--the three leading steel associations in the United States--released the following point-by-point response to China's white-paper defense of its trade policies:

* The CCCMC paper does not address at all the major problems of Chinese government subsidies to the steel sector. These subsidies, which have been described at length in several recent papers by U.S. steel producers, have already provoked a WTO challenge by the United States. With assistance from these subsidies, China's crude steel production increased by 200 million metric tons from 2003 to 2006--an amount roughly equal to twice the total crude steel production in the United States. Steel from China does not have a right to unfettered access to the U.S. market, with little regard for WTO rules.

* The CCCMC would like people to believe that recent Chinese government policy will help resolve the existing "imbalances" in China's steel market. But, as noted above, China's government policies are, in large measure, the cause of the current problem. Because of these policies, China went from being a net importer of 34.7 million tons of steel in 2003 to being a net exporter of 33.2 million tons last year. In other...

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