The Wall Street Journal reported today that European steel producers will press the EU to apply tariffs on Chinese steel in response to continued dumping.  Ongoing, large quantities of Chinese steel exports have become a major problem for European producers whose costs are growing along with a rising Euro.  Further compounding their problems are China’s continued subsidization of its domestic steel production, currently estimated at $52 billion over the past five years.

While free trade has been the lynchpin of both European Union and U.S. trade policy in recent years, it would seem that there is a growing sense of “enough is enough”—at least among the Europeans.  EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has cautioned China that its “current level of steel production is unsustainable.”  And Beijing has recognized, in the face of European concerns, that its steel exports may need to be curtailed.

The point is simply that both the EU and the U.S. are facing dumping and illegally subsidized competition from China.  If the Europeans are ready to take action, the U.S. should be as well. 

It’ll be interesting to hear what our Presidential candidates have to say on the issue.  Along those lines, AAM’s Scott Paul has published an interesting piece on today’s Huffington Post that takes a look at the upcoming Democratic Presidential debate in Philadelphia.

##

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 8:15 pm and is filed under Holding China Accountable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.