Carpenter Technology Corporation has said that it was pleased by the US Commerce Department’s preliminary ruling that stainless steel bar products from five countries were sold in the USA below fair value, triggering duties on their future shipments into the country. âImports of stainless steel bar have increased recently to record levels, and the Commerce Departmentâs preliminary determination confirms that dumping by foreign producers in the five countries is the root cause of that surge,â? said William J. Pendleton, Carpenterâs director of corporate affairs. In December Carpenter joined with four other domestic manufacturers of stainless bar in a broad dumping action against six foreign producers â in France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Taiwan and the UKâ charging them with unfairly pricing imports of stainless bar in the USA. Italy also was charged with government subsidisation of certain Italian producers in a concurrent countervailing duty petition, which sought additional duties to offset those subsidies. Today, the Commerce Department announced preliminary dumping duties on bar shipped from five of the six countries (all except Taiwan).
