[ferro-alloys.com]The US Department of Commerce's duty investigations on common alloy aluminum sheet from 18 countries, initiated in March, are necessary to ensure fair trade in the US aluminum industry as Chinese overcapacity, routed through other countries, continues to flood the domestic market, according to JW Aluminum CEO Lee McCarter.

"What we seek is not to shut off competition into our country," McCarter told S&P Global Platts in an interview Monday. "What we seek is a level playing field- nothing more, nothing less."

Commerce imposed antidumping and countervailing duties on imports of common alloy sheet from China in 2018. McCarter said JW was part of that case, which initially succeeded in reducing sheet imports into the US.

"There is a very rigorous process that the government goes through to determine whether or not there has been dumping and damage," he said, adding that such trade mechanisms have been a staple in fair trade policy for decades. "We are following those tried and true rules as it related to China, we took them on, we won that case and imports directly from China declined," he said.

However, McCarter said Chinese producers continued to build out capacity and began to redirect their exports, originally intended for the US market, to other parts of the world.

"Other parts of the world then just started dumping their excess capacity into the US instead of defending their own markets," he said.

The influx of common alloy sheet from other parts of the world led the Aluminum Association's Common Alloy Aluminum Sheet Trade Enforcement Working Group, which includes JW Aluminum, to file additional antidumping and countervailing duty petitions on sheet from 18 countries.

When filing the petition in March, the Aluminum Association said imports from the subject countries increased to 748.3 million lb in 2019 from 657.6 million lb in 2017, fully replacing and exceeding the decline in volume of Chinese imports in the US market, according to a statement.

"If you are using the North American market to dump your capacity, by all means we are going to take a strong defense in that area," McCarter said.

(S&P Global Platts)

• [Editor:王可]