Taiwan: Taiwan slaps anti-dumping duties on Chinese beer and hot-rolled steel

Taiwan’s Ministry of Finance said on June 26 that it would slap anti-dumping duties on Chinese-made beer and hot-rolled steel for four months from Thursday next week (July 3), claiming “substantial damage” to Taiwan’s industry, Taipei Times reported.

The finance ministry in a statement said that it and the Ministry of Economic Affairs “have preliminarily determined that there is dumping [of these products] and it has caused substantial damage to domestic industry.”

The finance ministry said that the duties would be imposed for four months to “prevent our industry from continuing to suffer damage during the investigation.”

The levies on Chinese-made beer would range from 13.13 percent to 64.14 percent, while for steel they would be either 16.9 percent or 20.15 percent, it said.

The finance ministry in March launched anti-dumping probes into Chinese-made beer and some steel products following complaints of unfair competition.

Taiwan has anti-dumping duties on 10 products, including eight from China, which is its largest trading partner, official data showed.

China was the biggest source of beer imports to Taiwan last year, with shipments topping US$125 million, Bloomberg News reported.

The nation was also looking at whether low prices of certain Chinese hot-rolled steel products resulting from “long-standing overcapacity” in manufacturing were harming domestic players, the finance ministry said.

Taiwan has become the biggest export destination of Chinese beer brewers, which seized more than 70 percent of the nation’s beer market in the first quarter of this year, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Hsu Fu-kuei told a news conference on June 26.

Over the past five years, Chinese beer makers have exported more than NT$16 billion (US$548.32 million) worth of products to Taiwan, Hsu said.

Chinese suppliers have caused damage to domestic beer makers and the consequences would be dire if the government does not take anti-dumping measures, he added.

Local beer companies have seen their market share slide 20 percent, with production falling 15 percent, DPP Legislator Chung Chia-pin said, adding that that led to about 30 percent decline in utilization.

That indicated that Chinese beer suppliers have severely damaged local beer companies’ businesses, he said.

About 70 percent of Taiwanese supported the government’s measure to levy anti-dumping tax on Chinese beer makers to safeguard the market order, DPP Legislator Kuo Kuo-wen said, citing an unspecified public opinion poll.