Twenty-eight countries including the United States, Japan and Germany agreed to strengthen monitoring of Chinese steel rerouted through third countries.
The countries planned to endorse the joint framework at a ministerial meeting of the Global Forum on Steel Excess Capacity (GFSEC) held in Wisconsin on the 30th, Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun reported. GFSEC was launched under an agreement reached at the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou, China, in September 2016 to address global steel overcapacity.
The new framework centers on collecting and sharing information on Chinese steel exports, including the country where the steel was actually produced. The countries will also pursue sharing data on transactions suspected of involving so-called transshipment, in which goods are exported by way of a third country. The aim is to make it easier to identify such cases and to impose anti-dumping duties on the products involved.
Chinese steel entering markets in ways that skirt anti-dumping duties has become a pressing issue among major economies. China's crude steel output rose to about 960 million tons last year from roughly 130 million tons in 2000, according to the World Steel Association. Its share of global crude steel production climbed to 52% from 15% over the same period.
Domestic steel demand in China, meanwhile, has stalled, pushing cheap surplus steel into overseas markets and threatening steel production bases in other countries.
The United States, Japan and European nations have responded with trade measures such as anti-dumping duties, but tracing supply routes for transshipped exports has proved difficult. The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has raised the same concern. The U.S. government compiled a report last month on exports routed through third countries, criticizing China for expanding its involvement in what it called illegal transshipment practices.
