US keeps increased duties on Chinese tires

The US Department of Commerce announced that, following a new investigation, it was decided to maintain anti-dumping and countervailing duties on imports of passenger car and light truck tires from China, as "the supply of Chinese tires is likely to continue or begin to damage US industry."

The ministry said in a statement that if anti-dumping duties were lifted, suppliers are expected to start selling products again at lower prices, with an average dumping difference of up to 87.99%.

Anti-dumping and countervailing duties on the import of passenger car and light truck tires from China were introduced in the United States in August 2015, and the ministry is required to conduct a market survey every five years to determine if they should be maintained. After the appearance of new tariffs, imports of Chinese passenger tires in the country fell by almost 95%, and if in 2014 50.4 million tires of this category were supplied to the American market from China, then in 2019 - only 2.8 million. In the first six months, imports fell another 44.2% to 905,444 tires.

The introduction of the increased tariffs was prompted by a petition from the US trade union USW, which said five years later that if the increased tariffs were canceled, "suppliers will sell tires at prices that will be even lower than the fair value than during the investigation five years ago."

The amount of anti-dumping duties introduced in 2015 varied from 14.4 to 87.9%, the size of countervailing duties - from 20.7 to 100.8%, and separate tariffs were set for some producers. For all others, duties were set at 30.9% and 87.8%, respectively.

After China sharply cut the supply of tires to the United States, imports from other Asian countries began to grow, and some Chinese manufacturers localized production outside the country. As a result, in 2020, the USW issued a new petition demanding the introduction of anti-dumping duties on the import of tires from four more Asian countries - Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan and South Korea.