Issue 32, 2024 - This week's editorial: Trade cases excite market, US HRC rebound continues

It may be August but the markets were anything but on holiday last week. Trade cases provided far more excitement than is usually the case at this time of year, while strengthening US steel prices were an antidote for negative sentiment elsewhere, especially in Asia.

Increasing trade cases had been expected amid China’s growing low-priced steel exports and global economic fragmentation, but it seems these have snowballed in recent weeks. The EU initiated an anti-dumping investigation on imports of hot-rolled flat steel from Egypt, India, Japan, and Vietnam after a complaint filed by Eurofer in June.

This is big news for two reasons. Firstly, although trade has reduced since the first quarter, India has been one of Europe’s main HRC suppliers in recent years and enjoyed higher-paying business in the EU versus other destinations. Secondly, the other three countries are part of the EU’s “other country” HRC safeguard quota and are each already capped at 15% of the total quota. Slapping an additional restriction on them in this way would be unprecedented.

Of the three origins in this quota regularly maxing out their quarterly allocations, only Taiwan has managed to escape being included in the anti-dumping proceedings. According to some sources, if the current arbitrage between Chinese and European prices remains, any future anti-dumping duty could benefit Chinese suppliers, who are levied with EU anti-dumping and countervailing duties but are not subject to a safeguard quota.

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