U.S. sets duties on China steel goods as cases mount

By Doug Palmer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Tuesday it set preliminary duties ranging from 2 percent to 438 percent on hundreds of millions of dollars of imported steel wire decking from China to offset government subsidies.

It was the latest in a growing list of actions against imports from China, the United States' second-largest trading partner. Industry filed five new complaints against China in September, believed to be a record for a single month.

Since January, the Commerce Department has launched at least one dozen investigations into charges Chinese companies receive government subsidies that allow them to sell more cheaply than U.S. competitors or "dump" goods in the United States at unfairly low prices regardless of profit or loss.

The preliminary decision on Tuesday concerns welded-wire rack decking, a product used in industrial and other commercial storage rack systems.

U.S. companies imported an estimated $317 million of such decking in 2008, an increase of 49 percent from 2006.

The Commerce Department said it set countervailing duty rates of 2.02 percent for Dalian Huameilong Metal Products Co and 3.13 percent for Dalian Eastfound Metal Products. Both cooperated in its investigation.

But a significant number of Chinese companies did not complete the U.S. government's questionnaire and those companies were given an adverse countervailing duty rate of 437.73 percent "for non-responsiveness," the department said.