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USW Wins Second Step to Address China’s Paper Imports |
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Just two months after announcing it will enforce trade laws against China for illegally subsidizing its paper products, the U.S. Commerce Department announced May 30 it will use a second law against dumping to impose duties of up to 99.65 percent on glossy paper from China. Commerce also plans to place dumping duties on glossy paper from Indonesia and Korea.
United Steelworkers (USW) President Leo Gerard says the move finally shows “enforcing trade rules can make a difference in defending American workers’ jobs and the industries they work in.”
We are pleased that the Commerce Department has rejected calls from the Chinese government to grant special treatment to its dumped and subsidized exports. We believe that strong enforcement of all our trade remedy law tools is required to help level the playing field for the American paper industry.
The USW, along with NewPage Corp., filed a complaint with the Commerce Department against China, Indonesia and Korea for dumping glossy paper on the U.S. market. The paper is used in high-end printing of catalogues, movie posters, corporate reports and magazines.
The May action is the second step in the process of leveling the playing field for paper workers. Under trade law, Commerce can impose duties on products dumped on the U.S. market. Dumping occurs when a foreign country sells a product in the United States at a price less than the cost of production.
On March 30, Commerce reversed a decades-old policy and declared that countervailing duty laws apply to non-market economies such as China’s. That law, which is different from the dumping law, allows the United States to impose tariffs or duties on imports that are illegally subsidized by governments. In March, the union and NewPage provided extensive evidence that China massively subsidizes its paper industry, allowing it to swamp the U.S. market with cheap imports, costing U.S. jobs and damaging the economy.
The dumping of paper products by China, Indonesia and Korea has a human cost. This year, there are more than 9,800 workers represented by the USW at 22 paper mills that produce glossy paper in 13 states—a drop of 19 percent in just three years. The USW currently represents 130,000 workers in the paper and forestry products industries, a loss of some 60,000 jobs since 2002.
While the move to level the playing field on paper products is a step in the right direction, there still is a long way to go to stop the damage done by bad trade policies with China. The U.S. trade deficit with China soared to $233 billion last year, and this year’s first-quarter $46.4 billion deficit is twice as large as in the same period last year.
According to a report by Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the U.S. trade deficit with China between 1997 and 2006 has displaced production that could have supported more than 2 million U.S. jobs. Most of these jobs have been lost since China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. Contrary to the predictions of its supporters, China’s entry into the WTO has failed to reduce its trade surplus with the United States or increase overall U.S. employment, according to the report, Costly Trade with China.
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