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USITC rules against antidumping duties for PET imports from five countries

https://www.chemnet.com   Oct 19,2018 S&P Global Platts
The US International Trade Commission has ruled against the US polyethylene terephthalate industry in relation to its request to impose antidumping duties on PET from Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea, Pakistan and Taiwan, the organization said Thursday.

The US PET industry was not "materially injured or threatened with material injury" by imports from the five countries and that their PET sold in the US was not done so at less than fair value, the USITC said.
As a result of the commission' decision, "no anti-dumping duty orders will be issued on imports of this product from Brazil, Indonesia, Korea, Pakistan, and Taiwan," it said in a statement.

The US launched preliminary tariffs on PET imports from the aforementioned nations in May, lobbying a 24.09% duty on M&G Polimeros Brasil while fellow Brazilian producer Companhia Integrada Textil de Pernambuco was hit with a 226.91% duty. All other Brazilian producers and exporters faced a 93.60% duty.

Indo-Rama Synthetics and other Indonesian PET producers faced a duty of 13.16%, while Korean product was subject to duties of 101.41% for Lotte Chemical and TK Chemical and at 8.81% for SK Chemical.

For Pakistan, Novatex and all other domestic companies were hit with 7.75% duty.

The USITC's decision was expected to open the door for imports from the nations in question, which had previously been stifled with anti-dumping duties eating into margins. The US PET market has been relatively strong throughout the summer and into the fall, driven in part by tight feedstock supplies and higher pricing.

Accordingly, US producers were able to push through price increases in September as feedstock paraxylene contracts rose 10.50 cents and PTA contracts subsequently gained 7.05 cents.

Overall, the US has seen PET imports rise this year while the five nations in question have sent considerably less volume through August, the most recent USITC data.

So far, the US has imported 768,198.9 mt of PET through August, up 103,099.5 mt (15.5%) year on year when compared with the first eight months of 2017.

In a related development, the five nations at the center of the investigation have seen their collective share shrink to just 16.7% this year. In in the previous two years, those five countries accounted for a combined 39.9% of all US PET imports in 2016 and 52.7% last year.
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