Jason Douglas of The Wall Street Journal tells his readers that cheap Chinese steel is flooding the global market as producers try to unload a surplus of metal created by the country’s property-market downturn. He writes:
China’s epic property bust has saddled its steelmakers with a glut of unsold metal. They are now shipping it overseas at knockdown prices—and the U.S. isn’t the only country pushing back.
President Biden on Wednesday asked U.S. trade officials to hit imports of Chinese steel with heftier tariffs, the latest move in a broader campaign against cheap Chinese exports that Washington says are swamping U.S. and global markets.
Exports of Chinese steel have risen 33% in the past year as the country’s enormous producers try to unload their wares abroad now that construction at home has dried up. In the 12 months through February, China exported 95 million metric tons of steel, according to Chinese customs data, a sum that exceeds estimates for total U.S. steel consumption in all of 2022. […]
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, on a recent trip to Beijing, warned that China is now simply too large for the rest of the world to absorb its ballooning industrial output, which U.S. officials say is supported by lavish subsidies and state-directed loans.
“When the global market is flooded by artificially cheap Chinese products, the viability of American and other foreign firms is put into question,” Yellen said.
Read more here.
