The Korea Trade Commission has decided to impose anti-dumping (AD) duties on flat-rolled products of stainless steel originating in China, Indonesia, and Taiwan, China, for a period of five years.

*LDR: Choose the lower of dumping rate and industrial damage rate based on lighter tariff rules

According to the ruling, the final dumping duty rate for Shanxi TISCO was set at 23.69%, that for LISCO was 25.82%, and that for all other Chinese producers and exporters was 24.83%. Indonesia Tsingshan and all others received a duty rate of 29.68%. Taiwan YUSCO and Walsin Lihwa were assigned with 9.47% and 7.17%, respectively. Other producers and exporters from Taiwan,China were subject to a rate of 9.07%.

For the Chinese market, from January to June 2021, China exported a total of 284,800 tons of stainless steel to South Korea, an increase of 11,000 tons year-on-year, an increase of 4.02%, accounting for 13.2% of China's total exports. Among them, 73,600 tons were exported to South Korea in June, a new high this year.

From the data of China's exports to South Korea in the past two years, the volume of domestic stainless steel exports to South Korea has remained basically stable. In 2019, the total exports to South Korea were 505,700 tons, accounting for 13.78% of total exports. In 2020, exports to South Korea were 541,000 tons, accounting for total exports. Of 15.8%.

On the whole, the implementation of the additional anti-dumping tax rate will make domestic stainless steel exports to South Korea a short-term downward trend. However, due to the low proportion of Chinese stainless steel exports to South Korea in total production and consumption, in the first half of the year, exports to South Korea only accounted for 1.78% of the apparent domestic stainless steel consumption, which has a relatively limited impact on the logic of the current tight supply and demand in the domestic stainless steel market.