HEADLINE: U.S. Companies Largely Back
Trade Decisions; Antidumping Rules
BYLINE: By LOUIS UCHITELLE
BODY: American business expects the World Trade
Organization's pronouncements on antidumping rules to ease the restrictions on
steel imports -- a prospect pleasing to companies like Caterpillar, a
steel user, and not very pleasing to domestic steel producers like
the Sandmeyer Steel Company of Philadelphia.
"Antidumping laws are becoming the trade protection
law of choice around the world," said William Lane, Caterpillar's director in
Washington for governmental affairs. "We are opposed to the efforts to restrict
the flow of fairly traded steel."
Under
American law, endorsed by the W.T.O.'s present rules, dumping occurs when a
foreign company sells a product here for less than the cost of producing it, and
American companies are injured as a result. Hundreds of antidumping cases are
filed in the United States annually, and roughly half involve steel shipped from
Brazil, Japan, South Korea, Russia and Ukraine.
The
W.T.O.'s declaration said that current antidumping provisions "would benefit
from clarification." The ministers instructed a committee to make
recommendations.
For Willard A. Workman, senior vice
president for international affairs at the United States Chamber of Commerce,
"clarification" means changing the rules to ease the restrictions on imports.
While furniture makers and steel users are pleased, steel makers are upset, and
so are lumber companies, which have filed an antidumping action against
Canada.
Ronald P. Sandmeyer Jr., chief executive of
Sandmeyer Steel, said: "If you look at some Southeast Asian countries and
certain European countries, they can consume nowhere near what they produce. So
where do they try to sell their excess production? The United States, of
course." LOUIS UCHITELLE
Document 13 of 16. 