China Faces Threat of EU Duties on Pipe Fittings, Tableware

The European Union may impose tariffs on pipe fittings and ceramic tableware from China, the latest evidence of the Chinese threat to higher-cost EU producers.

The EU opened inquiries into whether Chinese manufacturers of "threaded tube or pipe cast fittings" and of ceramic tableware and kitchenware sell them in the 27-nation bloc below cost, a practice known as dumping. The probe into the pipe fittings also covers imports from Indonesia and Thailand.

The investigations will determine whether the goods are "being dumped and whether the dumped imports have caused injury to the union industry," the European Commission, the bloc's trade authority in Brussels, said on Feb. 16, 2012 in the Official Journal. The commission has nine months to decide whether to impose provisional anti-dumping duties for half a year and EU governments have 15 months to decide whether to apply "definitive" levies for five years.

The pipe fittings inquiry stems from a Jan. 3 dumping complaint by a European group representing companies that account for more than half the EU's output of the product, according to the commission. The other probe results from a complaint the same day on behalf of European manufacturers that represent more than 30 percent of the EU's output of ceramic tableware and kitchenware, said the commission. It didn't identify any EU producers in either case.