After 7 US based steel manufacturers filed a petition with US trade agencies accusing China of illegally dumping pipes used to extract oil and gas United Steelworkers alleged that Chinese mills benefit from subsidies for OCTG which are sold in US.

USW said US Steel, the largest US steelmaker by 2008 sales, has idled steelmaking capacity and cut spending to contend with a drop in demand. The recession has put more steel manufacturing jobs at risk and more jobs still may be lost because of US imports of Chinese-manufactured steel products.

Mr Gary Hubbard a spokesman for the union said “Nearly one third of the pipe manufacturing organizations we represent are experiencing layoffs. China continues to divert its products to our market and if we sit back and do nothing we’ll lose our production capacity. He said that the petition seeks to assure we’ll have the jobs when the market comes back from the current recession.”

According to the United Steelworkers Steel pipe imports from China increased from 900,000 tonnes in 2007 to last year’s level of 2.2 million tonnes, worth an estimated USD 2.7 billion. The union also joined the petition.

The petition filed at the US International Trade Commission is US Steel Corp v People’s Republic of China, No 2659.

(Sourced from Bloomberg)