Chinese fastener enterprises fight back the high anti-dumping rate of EU

After 7 years of EU orders back! These two days, Haiyan Haitang standard parts factory began to ship the first batch of fasteners to the EU market. After seven years of cross-border "sawing war", Chinese fastener enterprises finally fought back the high anti-dumping rate of EU and returned to the EU market.

"We have worked hard for this moment for seven years, and the victory is hard won!" said Fu Shengbo, general manager of Haitang, one of the "iron enterprises" actively participating in the collective response. On February 27 this year, the European Commission decided to formally lift the anti-dumping measures against China's steel fasteners. As soon as the announcement was released, the European "small partners" who have cooperated with seawall for more than ten years immediately turned around. Other fastener enterprises in Jiaxing have also successively returned to Europe.

"This is a long-standing transnational lawsuit." Qian Yueping, Secretary General of Jiaxing Fastener Association, said that in 2009, the EU began to impose up to 85% anti-dumping duties on China's fastener products, which directly affected China's exports to Europe of nearly US $1 billion. As the main involved area, Jiaxing fastener industry suffered heavy losses. According to the data from the Municipal Bureau of Commerce, from 2008 to 2015, the export amount of fasteners from the city to the European Union decreased from $332.88 million to $154.28 million, down 54%; the export amount of products involved in the case to the European Union decreased from $141.49 million to $9.85 million, down 93%. Many companies are forced to withdraw from the EU market.

In the face of unfair anti-dumping duties, Chinese fastener enterprises, represented by Jiaxing enterprises, fought back and urged the Ministry of Commerce to resort to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism for relevant EU legislation and anti-dumping measures. On July 15, 2011, the WTO ruled that China won the case and asked the EU to complete relevant legal amendments by the end of 2012. China's first case against the EU in the WTO was successful.

However, the EU only reduced the anti-dumping duty to 74.1% in the implementation of the ruling, and the fine-tuning tax rate was only superficial, while the rest of the ruling was not implemented. In October 2013, China launched the "enforcement lawsuit" again, and won the lawsuit again on January 18 this year.

"It's hard to win, but it's clean!" said Zhang Jiansheng, director of the Municipal Bureau of Commerce. The win means that the highest barrier to fastener enterprises in our city has been smashed, and the door of the EU market will be opened again.

"In addition to bringing substantial benefits to enterprises, the case also has great institutional significance." Li Ye, a lawyer from jintiancheng (Beijing) law firm, who took on the case, believes that the case is the first one in China to challenge the WTO dispute against the EU's abuse of a substitute country and win a total victory. This case has shaken the EU's anti-dumping legislation against China for a long time, and also changed the unreasonable practices in the EU's anti-dumping investigation practice, which will help Chinese enterprises to improve the effectiveness of responding to the EU's anti-dumping investigation.

"The fastener industry is big but not strong, but the whole industry can actively respond to the war, do not retreat, do not give up, it is valuable!" said Chen Fuyi, deputy director of the Department of article and law of the Ministry of Commerce. In the Sino EU fastener anti-dumping case, the Jiaxing experience of "four body linkage" between the Ministry of Commerce and the local competent department of Commerce, industry associations, and enterprises involved in the case has become an effective experience for China's commercial departments to deal with international trade friction Proven.