Final Thoughts

The headline that you are going to read in not only our newsletter but in other publications as well, will be that the US Department of Commerce found evidence of material injury or potential material injury to the U.S. steel industry and therefore is preliminarily imposing countervailing duties on China, Italy, South Korea and India. Taiwan was found to not be hurting the domestic steel industry and was let off the hook totally.

When looking at the documents closer the amount of the subsidies being imposed were quite low. Here is what one steel mill executive was projecting for subsidies prior to the announcement this afternoon: China 55 percent (actual 26.26 percent except for the named mills that didn’t participate), India 13 percent (JSW 2.85%, Uttam 7.71% all others 5.28%), Korea 1.5 percent (actual 1.37% down to 0.69%). His comment was “anything higher will be gravy…” I assume that anything lower would then be considered a big disappointment.